Cypress, BC 3-5-19

EMSC

Well-known member
Tried turning lemons into lemonade.

I go on an annual guys trip which this year was at Whistler. About 3 weeks before departure though the Air Canada mid-day direct flight was cancelled leaving either an early morning or a late evening flight. Neither of which was particularly desirable timing. I managed to switch to a mid-morning flight on United (star partner) that still got me in hours ahead of when I wanted to arrive. Given the circumstances I decided to hit the local area of Cypress on the edge of town for a couple hours before heading back to the airport to pick up additional travelers.

First off lets just say traffic in Vancouver stinks and the road system is horrible. There is essentially one interstate style road and it comes no where near the airport. Then many of the in-town roads are very narrow lanes with many left hand turners in the left lane but without left hand turn signals at most intersections, etc... Basically the road planners there should smack themselves in the head with a hammer a few dozen times then start over from scratch. My 9 year old could come up with a better design than they have.

That said I was able to make it up to the hill for ~2.5 hours and use my Ikon pass to boot. Not sure when their last snows were, but obviously not recent. Probably 1/3 to 1/2 the terrain was roped off due to refrozen unpleasantness. Groomers were very hard and fast but not too horrible (a bit icy here or there and mostly rather scratchy). I managed to have fun as the temps were just on the edge of freezing and a few slopes just barely softened without really hitting corn snow level of goodness. Definitely good snow to learn how to be a ski racer and much like east coast skiing is much of the year. Though with a lot of base depth from prior obviously big snows.

The terrain is actually pretty decent looking. Nothing too steep, but also lots of single diamond pitch which would be lots of fun in the right conditions. Excellent views of the ocean and some the city as well. I was able to hit all the main chairs (2 are detachable quads), though they shut down Raven Ridge at 3pm after I had only one run over there. The double black trails on that were all roped off anyway. I spent most of my time on Lion's express since that faces S or SW and had full sun much of the afternoon (excepting a few clouds). The old center pole double chair on top of that doesn't serve much terrain, but the terrain does look kind of fun (when soft).

I headed out after my short stint at about 4:30p (they have night skiing on a large portion of the terrain and so don't close till 10p).

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Was always curious about that ski area. Nice pix, especially the water shot -- according to Google, that's the Strait of Georgia?
 
I'm coming up with Howe Sound; though the upper left corner of water would be part of the Straight of Georgia. The big boat in the water pic is the Horseshoe Bay - Langdale ferry.
 
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