Ski day 49: Good, followed by bad

Vert: 7,635 m;   YTD cum vert: 418,610 m
Runs: 15;   YTD cum runs: 777


At least the day started off great. Nice sunshine, cold temps, a trace to 5 cm of fresh snow, soft stuff with little trace of ice all over. Very pretty indeed.

Rolling Thunder. Pardon my finger in front of the lens

I did one warm up and headed straight to the South Side chutes.

The best entrance to the chutes. Right of Wildside

They were in very good shape, with really nice powder on top of very soft moguls on top of an ice crust that wasn't significant enough or exposed enough to be a bother. Okay, Wildside proper is full of unpleasant icy moguls the size of small cars but all I did was traverse it. Like the last few times I've been in the chutes, the farther left you go the better it gets. The bottom part is sweet, lightly tracked boot top powder.

Looking back from about Think Again

Tons of powder below

The pretty S turns in the middle are mine

I hung out here till lunch, and guided three groups around in here who had never been here before.


The forecast called for increasing cloudiness during the day turning to flurries. The PM started OK, but very quickly started to sock in...

The boundary fence along Bye Bye bowl

...and by 2 PM, it was a super flat light yeuch fest.

No contrast from the top of Red 90. Invisible moguls below.

I had two incidents of dropping into things I wasn't expecting because I couldn't see them coming. The light was still OK over on Wawa, but I decided to head out early as I have "things to do" tonight.