The hour wait couldn't come quickly enough as the cold temps had started taking their toll on my feet and hands. We reached the gondola well before 8:30am and we made our way up to the top of Red Chair. The powder looked pretty nice down the west side of the mountain so we took our first run under Red Chair and found lots of powder and made fresh lines to the bottom of Franz. It's early season so you had to be careful of stumps and rocks but for the most part, it was just snow all the way. The rest of the cat track back to Red Chair was hard packed and easily manageable.
Second run we decided to head toward Rat Fink. Lots of snow through those trees. Decided to head into Marmot, only to find no one had tracked through there yet. Because it was so flat, we had to make way by foot to the Peak to Peak tower where we could finally strap back in and head out towards Green Acres. I was no longer freezing ... after the trudge through knee deep fresh snow, I was sweating. Lots of tree tops sticking out in the Green Acres area. And of course, once we got back to Emerald Chair, the queue for that was out of the gates. Welcome to opening day!
Once we got to the top of Emerald Chair, Ari suggested we hike the "Harmony Gold Rush". Since Harmony chair was not running, many people hike up Pika's Traverse to hit the "white gold" in Harmony. The hike wasn't that bad but it did tire me out, and quickly. We dropped about a half km up the traverse. Not quite as high as many others were hiking but high enough to get some good powder turns in.
The queue at Emerald Chair moved fairly quickly for the amount of people standing there. By the fourth run, we were getting pretty tired and hungry so we stayed on a groomer and hit some jibs. Ego Bowl to Enchanted Forest. Again, lots of powder but still had the occasional rock/tree that you had to look out for. Once we got back to the chair, Ari suggested we head down to mid-station and take the gondi back up. Sounded like a good idea but once we got into it, we realized we should have stayed up higher. All the snowguns were blowing and the coverage wasn't that deep. Not to mention it was pretty icy. Once we hit the flat part around Olympic Chair, we started running out of snow. I could see full patches of grass on some of the run. But that wasn't as bad as the logs you had to cross that covered up the many creeks and streams that run down and across Whistler Mountain. There was definitely way more snow last year!
Time for lunch and I was pretty cold and tired. After a long break I thought I had a few more runs in me but after jumping into Ego Bowl, I realized my legs were toast. We finally made our way back to Creekside where I was back in my truck by 2pm. There you have it. Opening Day 2010/2011. We need more snow but damn! ..... it was awesome just the same.
** 94cm/37in snowbase **
1 comments:
Yeah! Opening Day!
Post a Comment