70cm of new snow over the last week
A perfect blue bird day.

Ill let the photos do the talking.

Riders : James Collingridge, Suzi Mackintosh
Photographer: James Mackintosh

So I have not done a snow report for a few days now and that is because I have been too busy skiing instead of siting in front of my computer.

The snow for last few days has been awesome, in fact the last week has been really good. We have finally lost the hard layer of snow that has been sitting under the powder for the last few weeks and the snow has been falling all the way to the valley floor, so not only the top of the mountain has been good but the lower runs are in good shape as well.

Thank god the USA Presidents week holiday is over as the lift lines have been quite larger and the fresh snow that we have been getting is getting tracked out pretty quick. Luckily for all the locals they all have their favourite spots to get fresh tracks even when everything seems to be hacked to death.

I think we’re meant to have a few nice days now, and then start to snow again Friday.

Keep your fingers crossed, and prey for more snow.

Not much snow last night, in fact the snow report only reported 1cm, it was snowing pretty good when I got out of bed so I decided to go up anyway.

I’m so glad I did, we go to the Creekside Gondola just when it opened and jumped on. By the time we got to the top of Red there must have been about 10cm of new snow.

A couple of runs down Franz’s proved that we were in for a good day, lots of fresh low-density snow.

Once the peak opened we hit that and did a run don the Glacier Cirque, awesome, most of the time we were boot deep with the occasional area being knee deep. Wahoo. Another couple of runs off the peak, then we went and hit Million Dollar Ridge. We were basically breaking trail just to get there so we new it was going to be good, and we weren’t disappointed. Did this a couple of times then back home.

I love it when you have a great day thinking that is going to be just average.

Apart from the crazy lift lines because of U.S. holidays it was an awesome day with lots of fresh snow, and it continued to snow all day and is still snowing so tomorrow should be a good day as well. Can’t wait for Presidents week to be over so all the people go home.

Here’s a couple of shots from today to show you the conditions.

Skier: James Mackintosh
Photo: Suzi Mackintosh

Rider: Suzi Mackintosh
Photo: James Mackintosh

Although it didn’t snow last night, it has been snowing on and off for the last week, with 5 to 10cm of snow each day, and it was snowing all day today. We decided to ride Blackcomb as we have not been riding it that much lately, just because it is easier for us to access Whistler Mountain.

The mountain is in pretty good condition at them moment, but I would have to say that Whistler has better snow, not as much ice and hard pack.

We did a couple of laps on Spankeys ladder into Sapphire Bowl and the snow was really nice but the visiblity was quite bad. Then we went and rode Crystal chair and rode Fraggle rock into Log Jam. The snow was good but again lake the last few weeks the powder gets a bit this the lower you go.

All in all it was great day skiing, lets hope it keeps snowing.

14cm new snow overnight.

We had a great day skiing powder of the peak down to the bottom of red chair. Unfortunatly it is Presidents Week US holidays so there are a lot people here. While we were wating for Creekside Gondola to open we turned around to see that the line was going over the bridge to where Canski is, I’ve never seen it like that before, but I guess we will have to get used to it for the week.

The snow up top was great, but like the rest of the week by the time you get down to the bottom of Red chair the powder is getting a little thin and you break through to the hard snow underneath.

This is a shot from West ridge on Whistler Peak.
Skier: James Mackintosh
Photo: Suzi Mackintosh

We got up early to go skiing this morning, although it was pretty wet in the village we thought we should get up there and see what it was like. Basicly we went up then skiied all the way back down got in the car and came home.

The snow and weather was terrible, wet and windy, it is a great day to go to the pub or watch a movie.

The snow was awesome today.

Although it did not snow last night, it snowed all day and by the afternoon we were skiing boot deep powder.

With it snowing all day yesterday and last night, we thought that we should get up the mountain early for some powder runs. We were not disappointed, the snow was great.

Like every other day this week the snow was only good on the upper mountain, but hey that’s usually all you ride at Whistler. I would say in most places the fresh snow was between 15cm and 20cm deep, so there was enough snow in most areas to stop you hitting the hard snow underneath.

The forecast for the next week is looking pretty good, so keep your fingers crossed that we will get some good snow.

Whistler Blackcomb reported 5cm of new snow overnight so our expectations were not that high for great conditions.

We started the day catching the lift up the Peak where we decided that we would do a run down Whistler Bowl into VD. We were quite suprised at the conditions, sure there were a few sections that was dust on crust but overall the snow was really great. Whistler do their snow measurements at Pig Ally, which is at mid mountain, so most of the time the reported new snow is often more on the Peak. I would say the snow was between 10cm and 15cm on the Peak. The lower part of the run was a little average as the snow that had fallen was still on the trees, so the snow was really average.

We headed back to the top of the Peak and did a few runs down the Cirque and the Couloir, the snow down here was great and we weren’t even braking through to the snow underneath.

After a small break to re-hydrate at the Roundhouse we headed over to Harmony area for some more runs. I’m not usually a fan of the Harmony area, but seeing as though it wasn’t an epic super deep powder day we decided to get out of the usual routine and do some runs that we do not usually do. We did a few runs down McConkeys and the other horseshoe chutes and again the snow was great, although it was quite chopped by now there were still plenty of slabs left to rip up. The lower part of Harmony the runs were really icy so it was time to just go straight.

Overall it was a great day on the hill with plenty of fresh snow and a good variety of runs. Can’t wait to do it all again tomorrow.