Day 44 | vertigo

Now that the holidays are over and things are slowing down with work, I want to take some time this season to learn more intermediate and advanced runs on the mountains, mainly in Harmony and Peak. I asked my supervisor, Omer, to show me some secret trails that only the locals know about. Omer and I met up with another co-worker of ours, Aimee, and we headed up the Village Gondola around 10am.

Not much new snow fell overnight but 15-25cm were forecasted to fall throughout the day. Freezing levels have lowered so it meant more good powder is going to be found at least down to Emerald Chair. After a quick warm up run down to Red, we headed over to Harmony. Winds were gusting up to 90kph and when we unloaded off Harmony Chair, it was a complete white-out. You could see nothing but white. I started down the traverse but quickly got stuck and started experiencing vertigo. Vertigo is when you get dizzy because your senses are sensing two different things. In this case, I was moving but I also felt like I was standing still. Thus the dizziness. Quite scary to be honest, especially since you can't see a thing and you have no idea where you are. I somehow made it down to the crossroads of Pika's Traverse and instead of heading over to Gun Barrels, we ended up staying on the traverse and dropping into an open bowl. This is where Omer and Aimee took the cliff drop (see video).  I, of course, chickened out of taking that drop!!  There was plenty of deep fresh pow to be found off the traverse and we were looking forward to taking the same line again.

Unfortunately, when we got back down to Harmony Chair, they shut the lift due to high winds. We cat-tracked it back to green chair hoping that the Peak would still be running but no such luck. Omer took us over into some trees by Franz Chair. The snow was a bit crusty underneath with nice powder on top. It will only take a few more centimeters of fresh snow to make for some nice lines tomorrow. We headed in for lunch around 1pm and that's where I called it a day. I still felt a bit dizzy and I was wet and cold. I'm such a wuss.

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