Day 11 - Fresh Tracks & First Gondola

Woke up to six inches of snow on top of my car.  I made plans the evening before to do Fresh Tracks with Sean and Libby.  20cm was forecasted to fall between Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon, but freezing levels were on the rise, so we wanted to get in and out as early as possible.  No one else had this idea as we lined up at 6am and were huddled nicely under the overhang at G1 as no one else was in line yet.  Once the doors opened, we were on the first gondola as well.

By 8am we were on our planks and shredding the powder.  We literally had a fresh line from the Roundhouse down to Emerald for three to four runs.  The snow got quite heavy about 2/3rd down Emerald Chair.  We found lots of knee deep snow off piste.  By 9:30am our legs were burning and exhausted.  The snow had been fairly chopped up by this time and we were quite wet.  We dropped below Emerald Chair expecting a bumpy ride down to mid-station, but to our surprise the snow was lighter lower down the mountain.  As we dropped in the Olympic Chair area, we had fresh tracks of knee deep light snow all the way past the gondola.  It was so awesome.  Surprisingly the snow was better from Olympic Chair down than from Emerald Chair up.  

It was also snowing/icing quite heavily throughout the morning.  The Alpine wasn't going to open due to high winds and freezing levels were rising quickly.  Our snow base is now 220cm.  Another 15-20cm is forecasted overnight but freezing level will be around 1600m.