Fi, Aimee and I somehow all managed to have today off. Since I was still holding onto two fresh tracks tickets, we decided to get up early and have an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. There was no new snow overnight so fresh tracks wasn't too busy. We met at the gondi at 6:45am, wondering if the day was going to be as good as we had hoped for. Forecast called for a "blue bird" and I brought the digital SLR camera.
Once the bell rang, we hit the green zone groomers. (All right, let's be honest. With no new snow overnight, no one moved away from their breakfast when the bell rang. We left about 20 minutes l The groomed runs were hard packed but the terrain park was looking pretty sweet. With all the snow and rain the last few days, the park had been pretty decrepit earlier in the week. But this AM, the crew had gone through and rebuilt all the jumps. We decided to head there and take some action shots. I was pretty stoked as Aimee and Fi built up my confidence enough to get me to keep more speed in order to clear the flat parts off the jumps and to land on the softer downside. It was pretty scary first time but once I landed one, it was so much easier than not clearing it.
By 10:30am, we were a bit frozen and needed a bathroom break. Our Supervisor, Omer, knew we were going to be out riding and text'd us to see if we wanted him to show us around on the Peak. Aimee was familiar with a black diamond run called The Cirque so we headed to Peak Chair with plans to see Omer in a bit. The entrance to The Cirque was tricky (see photo) but we made it through easily. The terrain through here is some of the steepest on Whistler. The snow was tracked but it was soft and there was a lot of it. Omer was waiting for us by the time we made it back to the chair. He decided to take us to West Cirque via the upper entrance. I did not enjoy the traverse to get to the West Cirque. A small section of it had some exposed rocks and the traverse wasn't that easy on a snowboard. Nevertheless, I eventually made my way to the entrance which was similar to Cirque. Again, the snow was amazing. We traversed over to Sneaky Pete and headed to Escalator and down into Frog Hollow. Mind you, I would never venture onto these runs on my own. It's very easy to find yourself staring down a cliff that drops 50 feet or so. But once you know where you're going, you're perfectly safe..... if you're a high intermediate to advanced skier or rider. Frog Hollow was sweet through the trees with some nice hits to pop and rollers to drop.
Aimee and Fi wanted to hit more of the rock drops off the Cirque so we thanked Omer for the tour and rode Cirque three more times. (see photos)
It was time to hit Harmony and do more exploring. We found lots of good snow in Harmony but nothing was as nice as the snow we found off McConkey's. We made a couple of long sweeping turns in deep fresh powder and then dipped through a few trees. It was sweet. We spent the rest of our afternoon in Harmony and missed last chair at 3:30pm. This was our cue to start heading down to the village. I think we made it from GS Run to the Valley in less than 15 minutes. We rode for seven hours without a lunch break. Our goggle tans are full on and our lips are sunburn. We had an awesome day! Capped it off with apres at Cinnamon Bear. Next up, six day work weeks for the last month of the Whistler Kids operation.
0 comments:
Post a Comment