Another Cold Sunny Day

I was a bit hesitant to go up today after reading the forecast / live temperatures in the morning. Apparently it was -22 at the peak, -15 in the alpine and -6 in the valley – combine that with an expected wind chill factor to an ‘effective’ -30 at the Peak, and that is one COLD day. Still, I had made plans to ski the day with a friend who is in town for a few days, so up I went.

It was cold, and I wore a face/neck warmer most of the day – but it wasn’t anywhere near as cold as I expected and I found I had worn too many layers and was actually HOT ! My exposed skin was thankful for the warmer, but my body was over heating and I even worked up a sweat on a number of occasions.

Absolutely no lift lines, and we were able to ski onto almost every chair of the day. I guess that is partly due to the cold weather, but also due to the low number of people in town.

The snow is very hard packed on almost all the groomed runs, and they are fun in a fast way – if you have decent edges (and the ability to use them). Off piste is pretty soft, although a few places had a crust to the snow. The Blackcomb glacier had some powder pockets and even the cut up stuff provided excellent skiing. The steeps were a little ‘bumpy’ and the snow a little ‘harder’ then the norm, eg Pakalolo – it would be nice to get some new snow to freshen them up. The only ‘bad’ areas are some of the steep sections of the Dave Murray Downhill, which are very ‘icy’ – but this is because of all the races we have held lately, and ski racers love to ice up the tracks (crazy eh!) Speaking of which -

Whistler is currently hosting the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) Alpine Skiing World Cup. All events are being held on Whistler mountain, using the same courses/runs as they will for next years Olympics and ParaOlympics. I believe it is the last event the IPC competition calendar, and they will be crowning the 2008/9 overall World Cup champs at the end of it. Apparently there are around 100 competitors from 16 countries competing in the categories standing, sitting and visually impaired. They also race all the disciplines (downhill, super-G, super-combined, giant slalom and slalom). It sure is impressive to watch these guys and girls fly down the slopes at extreme speeds. You should see the sit-skiers get big air over some of the rollers, amazing.

Thanks to everyone who has already voted for my blog at the Lonely Planet Blog Awards – there are only 10 days left so if you haven’t , could you ? It only take 2 seconds, and you don’t need to register or anything. I don’t think there are any prizes (except bragging rights), but it is nice to have my blog recognized – so Thank You !

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Snow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.