... Not With A Bang But A Whimper.

With winds between 127kmh and 65kmh the only lifts to open today (Sunday) were Merritts and Cruiser chairs. It rained it the village most of the night and the slopes looked very patchy this morning. Reports from Lynne, who ventured up to Merritts, were not good and I decided to refrain from the long slow, chair ride through the rain to have one last ski at Merritts.

T.S. Eliot may have had it right about season 2007 but my choice was to finish the official season with memories of yesterday’s wonderful snow. And wonderful it was. We awoke yesterday morning with the entire resort covered in a fresh white layer of snow. It wasn’t much more than a dusting below Kareela but above that was very nice. The snow report said 10cm but the weather station had only recorded 7mm. Some areas were devoid of any new snow but the strong winds responsible for that had also created some deep, dry wind drifts that were quite superb.

Karels, Sachas, Rim Run on the Basin, Merritts Falls to Sponars and right across the top to Wiamea were great. The visibility was limited and the wind-chill was down around –40C. The Bluff was also very enjoyable but each descent required you to negotiate the remains of the Supertrail to get back to the lift. There were very few people around – I suppose due to the inclement weather conditions but that was to our advantage as our tracks were continually filled in between runs.

High Noon: Saturday morning & afternoon, Sunday afternoon

Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon

Upper Supertrail Saturday and Sunday

Saturday: Tower 10, BunnyWalk, Village dusting

Marion on Karels

TraKtorman

Marion on Sachas (note snow depth on right)

TraKtorman

Richard, TraKtorman and Marion

Lynne and Mary enjoying Sachas

It appears that The Basin T-bar will continue running this week for at least a while. Unfortunately Karels won’t be.

Thanks for your support this past season. There should still be some very nice main range touring to be had. The extended walk out to reach it and the daily weather conditions will determine how often I get out there but I will continue to publish reports, just not with the same frequency. Having got onto the snow 91 days this season I still have 6 more to equal last year and we all know how bad last year was.