Well Spring is officially here, and has been for a while. Yet Whistler Blackcomb keeps getting more snow, and top quality snow it is. Generally it is snowing to the valley, which is 1.6 klms (1 mile) below the top of the mountains. So you can imagine the quality of the snow up top, it really is ‘champagne powder’ . Light, dry and fluffy, enough to make a lot of people drool. The alpine region has consistently been around -10 Celsius for at least a week, it is more like winter skiing than spring skiing. Not one person that I know is complaining, the skiing conditions right now are almost as good as it gets.

Today was a lot of fun, only a dusting of new snow overnight, but still plenty of fresh turns to be found. The best snow that I found was in the ‘Double Rubble’ chute, not a line for beginner skiers, as it has plenty of rocks, and sluff/avalanche potential. This year, the top entrance has developed quite a big cornice (see picture) so I opted for the safer and easier lower entrance. There was no need to search for crazy lines to find good snow, as every single run today was amazing, even all the groomed ones. In fact the groomed runs were in fantastic shape, the runs were groomed nicely, and the snow was like (to quote a friend) silk.

Whistler snow base is 272cm and the weather forecast is sick - around 30cm in the next 3 days, not counting small flurries. The freezing level is still staying in the valley, so this will all be awesome powder. Winter skiing is alive and well at Whistler, BC.

Unfortunately there is also some bad news this Easter weekend for the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort. It appears a young Japanese lady has gone missing sometime on Thursday. Ski Patrol, Search and Rescue and numerous avalanche dogs have been tirelessly searching the mountains, as well as out of bounds areas trying to find her. As far as I know (which isn’t a lot to be honest) they haven’t found her, and presume the worst by now. We have had extremely cold weather, and it would have been very hard for her to get by.

Lets all hope she made her way off the mountain safely and failed to contact anyone. Either that, or she managed to find herself some shelter and will be found shortly.