There wasn’t much new snow overnight ( around 5 cm ) but it kept snowing all day. Nice light snow, sometimes coming down quite heavy. The alpines struggled to open today, I know that Glacier chair on Blackcomb opened for a short time, but was closed around midday. It is still very windy up high, hopefully tomorrow they will manage to open up more terrain. Whistler mountain opened the Peak chair in the morning, and I am guessing it was closed around midday too as the storm picked up.
Forecast for tonight is promising, 15 - 20 cm with the freezing level in the valley, and only slight winds. Should be a good morning tomorrow, providing the freezing level doesn’t rise too soon, and the winds stay relatively low. Another 25 cm or so is expected tomorrow, with another half a metre over the weekend.
Snow base is 183 cm / 72 in and the temperatures are relatively warm ( around -3 to -5 Celsius ). Too many clothing layers and you risk sweating too much, therefore getting chilly on the chairs.
Have fun this week 
4 responses so far ↓
1 Ed // Jan 4, 2008 at 11:52 am
Question - why do the alpine areas close so often?
2 admin // Jan 4, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Well you would have to ask the actually ski resort for the real reasons, but as a general guide, the lifts don’t open when the winds are high due to safety reasons. One, the chairs can get swung around a lot, even hit the towers as the go past. You don’t want to be on chair if that happens.Two, it can be very hard, if not impossible for ski patrol to do avalanche control if the winds are high. It makes it unsafe for them to access the areas needed to be bombed. Especially since we normally get a lot of new snow at the same time we get these high winds, and poor visibility. I hope this helps, but in reality there are a lot of reason why lifts can’t be run at certain times.
3 Ed // Jan 4, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Heres hoping there’ll be a perfect balance of snow and open areas then in 2 weeks time
4 admin // Jan 6, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I just came across this video on YouTube which gives you a good idea of why alpine lifts and areas get closed during high winds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksEwUseLPHQ
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