Jay Silveira
New member
Sunday was “the day after” the storm, with almost 30 inches of new snow waiting to be tracked up in Hollywood Bowl and the surrounding steeps. I didn’t rush out, figuring it would take them a bit of time to open up the steep terrain anyway. From what I heard, they opened it sometime between 10 and 11 A.M., which worked out well for my arrival. On my way over through the Chair 3 area, I checked out the woods between Side Street and Main Street, and found that the snow had consolidated substantially since Saturday. The slope I hit, which topped out at maybe 25-30 degrees, wouldn’t even have been skiable the day before. Now it was a nice unbroken surface of powder, although it was no longer the kind of snow that left you gasping for air as it cascaded over your head. <BR> <BR>For my first run off Chair 4, I went right over to Hollywood Bowl. It was getting pretty tracked at this point, but there was still untouched powder to the skier’s right. There were a couple of airs I wanted to hit here, as long as conditions were right. The previous night, I’d worked out some of the technical difficulties with the 8 mm (36-degree field of view) lens for my head cam, so I fired it up. It was a pretty flat light day, but at least it would suffice for working out the positioning of the lens. I was interested in combining a couple of the airs into a smooth run, but the snow wasn’t going to allow it. The powder was settled enough that I had way too much speed coming off the first air and had to abort the second. Thus, I’d have to wait and tackle that challenge another day. <BR> <BR>Lower in the bowl, I cut a traverse hard left into the trees to check out the snow near the Hollywood Chutes. I dropped in earlier than the chutes, but found some awesome steep lines. Skiing the steep lines wasn’t deep powder skiing; it was more like riding on top of the snow the way it looks in those big Alaskan descents. It certainly felt big when I came rocketing into the bowl below the chutes at full speed. I continued on into the woods below, where the snow wasn’t as touched by the sun, and the powder got lighter and deeper. I know the snow was deep there, because I came through the trees and blasted off a huge log at full speed, a shot that had required more careful planning the week before when the guys were out for our annual ski trip. <BR> <BR>For my next couple of runs, I followed my same route through the bowl, but varied the steeps I hit after the traverse. For run two, I came in right above the Hollywood Chutes, but found the area loaded with hidden rocks below the new snow. This caused me to take a line a bit more to the right, although I was able to finish off by shooting the rocky gap at the bottom of one of the chutes. Since this area had been rocky, I headed past the chutes and into the trees for my third run. I’d seen a couple of tracks up there in what looked like good snow, and it was, except for the fact that it was getting heavier every run as the temperature rose. I was glad I’d gotten to ski the runs when I did because now the snow was transforming from settled powder into wet snow, which became less fun to ski. By the time I called it a day, it had risen to 32 F at the main base (7,000’) and when I got back to town it was almost 50 degrees. All in all though, it was another great day on he hill. <BR> <BR>J.Spin