Day 42 - 43cm of chaos!

Well, we've been doing the snow dances for some time now and Ullr finally came to visit dropping 43cm overnight!  Over two feet of snow fell in the last 24 hours.  Our current snow base is at 176cm (69inches).  You can imagine the people (and the chaos) such numbers bring to a small ski town on a Saturday.

Fresh tracks never opened.  People stood in line for two hours and were turned away around 8am.  Very high gusting winds at Roundhouse and Alpine levels caused avalanche control to delay opening all the chairs except for the gondola to mid-station.  At 8:30am, the queue for the Blackcomb gondola stretched down to The Keg!  Rumors were spreading that Whistler wasn't going to open past mid-station at all but by 9am - all the chairs were turning, with the exception of the Alpine of course.

Photos of chair line ups were insane!  The queue for Garbanzo Chair was at the top of the Fitz Chair at one point in the morning.  If you were riding out of Green Acres, you couldn't continue down to the Village as the line for Emerald Chair stretched out past the cut down run to get to the Village.  Colleagues who went up had a great day as they didn't have to wait in the lines.  They said the snow was good, a bit heavy and definitely cement-like by the time you reached the bottom of Emerald Chair.

I didn't get up today as I spent my day at the CLC with 11 Lil Rippers as it was Saturday Club.  The snow there was a bit difficult for the kids to learn on but we made the most of it.  It also snowed all day so we had plenty of fresh tracks off the Magic Carpet and some of the kids were actually good enough to get through it.  It was pretty cool.