Patrick
Active member
What a difference a week can make. After the 2-day New Year's Thaw on top of a disastrous snow year, as seen at Camp Fortune last Wednesday, the Edelweiss crew was hard at work to get the hill back in shape and opening terrain. Light snow all week in Ottawa, however it's a drop in the bucket in term of numbers, but it got the people thinking about skiing.
I also have a couple pictures taken by my daughter took with her cellphone, so this should please EMSC on FirstTracksOnline.
Previous weekend, Edelweiss was closed on the Saturday and deserted on the Sunday, this weekend was the busiest it had been all year. It was also the first weekend of various Ski Programs. Looker's left of Zoomer was also now open.
Saturday
The Race program were training slalom in a mixed of stubbies and full gates. On lower Yodeler in the morning and upper in the afternoon. Snow surfaces on the open runs were mid season quality with some fresh snow on top and the sides. Temperatures was -8c went we got there and warmed up to -5C later on. I managed to get 12 runs in exclusively on Yodeler and Zoomer. Snowmaking was going strong on the right side of Zoomer has a few snow whales were present and it shouldn't be long now they flatten them and open the full width of Zoomer.
Sunday
Much of the same on Sunday for conditions and temperature. Kids training and me skiing Zoomer and Yodeler. They were getting some good training. It was suppose to be a family ski day, but Tara wasn't feeling great so she stayed at home with my wife. The lineup for the HSQ were getting longer at 10am as the ski school were heading for the lift. The fixed quad opens at around 10:30 and the new quad on the right side of the ski area hasn't open this year due to lack of snow on those runs. The lineup was long and slow as the quad kept stopping. Although the conditions were pretty good, I was tired of waiting and decided to go inside, it's not like I wasn't going to ski here often enough this season anyways.
Instead of coming in at 11:30, the coaches made them ski past noon as they weren't getting a lot of mileage due to the lineups. While waiting for the kids lunch time I had a good talk with one of the "guys in charge" at Edelweiss. A talk that started about his kid's skiing the gates which lead to a whole range of topics including the lack of snow in Quebec in the last two seasons, the missing relief for the retiring babyboomers, immigrants and skiing not catering to new/non skiers and the fact that our paths have almost meet at a number of times in our skiing life. From growing up in Montreal and skiing Beaver Lake, to coaching my CEGEP team next to my year on the team, the University circuit and working at Gray Rocks where we would have dealt with SteepMomo's godmother SuperNat. The World is indeed a small place.
Let just say that without snowmaking, there wouldn't be a lot of skiing locally this year. He was mentioned that it wasn't cold enough to be real efficient in the snowmaking as temps never made below -20c so far this season and only a few nights made it's temps drop below -10c. Although the runs are open, the snow isn't deep. After the snowmaking is done on Zoomer, they are going to focus on the snowpark. Only after that will they try to open the expert Strief run. As he mentioned to us, there is one season a few years ago where they never really managed to open it as they ran out of time.
After that long lunch I took the fixed quad to the top left peak to see that side of the mountain for a change and ski a green run, mostly to avoid the lineups for the HSQ and to checkout what the snow looked like on the green runs. Three more runs and I was done. Not a big day, but an enjoyable day on a few aspects.
Originally posted with pictures and map on Ski Mad World. I'm having some technical difficulties with my Suunto, so I'll edit the post once I can download the logs.
I also have a couple pictures taken by my daughter took with her cellphone, so this should please EMSC on FirstTracksOnline.
Previous weekend, Edelweiss was closed on the Saturday and deserted on the Sunday, this weekend was the busiest it had been all year. It was also the first weekend of various Ski Programs. Looker's left of Zoomer was also now open.
Saturday
The Race program were training slalom in a mixed of stubbies and full gates. On lower Yodeler in the morning and upper in the afternoon. Snow surfaces on the open runs were mid season quality with some fresh snow on top and the sides. Temperatures was -8c went we got there and warmed up to -5C later on. I managed to get 12 runs in exclusively on Yodeler and Zoomer. Snowmaking was going strong on the right side of Zoomer has a few snow whales were present and it shouldn't be long now they flatten them and open the full width of Zoomer.
Sunday
Much of the same on Sunday for conditions and temperature. Kids training and me skiing Zoomer and Yodeler. They were getting some good training. It was suppose to be a family ski day, but Tara wasn't feeling great so she stayed at home with my wife. The lineup for the HSQ were getting longer at 10am as the ski school were heading for the lift. The fixed quad opens at around 10:30 and the new quad on the right side of the ski area hasn't open this year due to lack of snow on those runs. The lineup was long and slow as the quad kept stopping. Although the conditions were pretty good, I was tired of waiting and decided to go inside, it's not like I wasn't going to ski here often enough this season anyways.
Instead of coming in at 11:30, the coaches made them ski past noon as they weren't getting a lot of mileage due to the lineups. While waiting for the kids lunch time I had a good talk with one of the "guys in charge" at Edelweiss. A talk that started about his kid's skiing the gates which lead to a whole range of topics including the lack of snow in Quebec in the last two seasons, the missing relief for the retiring babyboomers, immigrants and skiing not catering to new/non skiers and the fact that our paths have almost meet at a number of times in our skiing life. From growing up in Montreal and skiing Beaver Lake, to coaching my CEGEP team next to my year on the team, the University circuit and working at Gray Rocks where we would have dealt with SteepMomo's godmother SuperNat. The World is indeed a small place.
Let just say that without snowmaking, there wouldn't be a lot of skiing locally this year. He was mentioned that it wasn't cold enough to be real efficient in the snowmaking as temps never made below -20c so far this season and only a few nights made it's temps drop below -10c. Although the runs are open, the snow isn't deep. After the snowmaking is done on Zoomer, they are going to focus on the snowpark. Only after that will they try to open the expert Strief run. As he mentioned to us, there is one season a few years ago where they never really managed to open it as they ran out of time.
After that long lunch I took the fixed quad to the top left peak to see that side of the mountain for a change and ski a green run, mostly to avoid the lineups for the HSQ and to checkout what the snow looked like on the green runs. Three more runs and I was done. Not a big day, but an enjoyable day on a few aspects.
Originally posted with pictures and map on Ski Mad World. I'm having some technical difficulties with my Suunto, so I'll edit the post once I can download the logs.