Apex Alpine, B.C., Feb. 18, 2016

Tony Crocker

Administrator
Staff member
Tseeb and I drove about 1.5 hours from Kelowna south to Penticton, then up to Apex Alpine. Flyover and John had driven up from Seattle the previous day and stayed overnight at the mountain. With 5 inches new overnight they got a couple of runs in before we arrived. It continued to snow all morning, when there were a few locals around, but by noon it was very quiet despite the powder lasting most of the day.

There is a small amount of alpine terrain near the 7,200 foot summit, but there were enough trees around to maintain adequate visibility even when it was snowing. Our first runs Great Wall, Pit and Sun Bowl were just skier's right of the main Quickdraw chair of 1,900 vertical. Steep sections would occasionally scrape a subsurface, but mellower pitches were nearly all powder. This included some of the lower mountain blue groomers like Wild Bill and Little Joe, as well as patches next to the skiercross course.

Terrain just skier's left of Quickdraw like Grouse Gulch and Chute was more consistently pitched for less bottoming out and also offered a few shots in the trees. We also took a couple of laps far skier's right into the Wildside area. This was almost completely untracked but there were only a couple of inches new snow over the subsurface. This area had partial south exposure (we think, since it was thick overcast the whole time) but I think the snow was probably less deep due to wind exposure. Skiing Wildside takes you to the slow 1,000 vertical Stock's chair, which was the only lift open on my first visit in 1999. We took a late lunch after our second run out there.

After lunch we checked out Apex' steepest but shorter runs to far skier's left. These usually sport serious moguls but are also direct north facing. When we scraped an occasional firm subsurface even in the trees we concluded that there had been some rain a week earlier, which I verified at the office at the end of the day. Nonetheless most of the snow was powder and only lightly tracked so we skied 4 runs out there, Make My Day, Peashooter, Magnum and Gromit.

I skied 27,100 vertical, 14K of powder. Naturally I was skiing my new DPS Wailer 112's for the first time since Japan. Apex has by far the lowest skier density in its ski region, and that really paid off on this day. Sorry, no pics due to the weather and the brisk pace. Flyover hit 30K, impressive for a telemark warm-up to Mustang Snowcat.
 
Apex is my kind of hill: extremely low key, friendly and relaxed, low skier density, steep, long fall lines, good trees, well-above average skiers and riders, good altitude and exposure and high quality snow (when it falls). I found the place very reminiscent of Discovery, but with longer runs and a much faster lift. A good time was had by all.

Despite the snow and low light, I took some pictures:

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Flyover said "Now they tell us..." - I think I took that picture, but it was with one of yours' camera or phone, but I still should get credit. Maybe I need to talk to a lawyer... :-({|=

I have a few more pictures, but no action shots.
 

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tseeb":2bvmv4vb said:
Flyover said "Now they tell us..." - I think I took that picture, but it was with one of yours' camera or phone, but I still should get credit. Maybe I need to talk to a lawyer...

You just did. My mistake. Post edited to add photo credit.
 
Not a big deal. Has anyone else noticed that if you look at some of these pictures with iPhone or iPad or download them to Windows laptop, they are upside-down. I thought we had this problem with iOs pictures fixed two years ago, but it appears to be back.
 
tseeb":i1qg3sg1 said:
Has anyone else noticed that if you look at some of these pictures with iPhone or iPad or download them to Windows laptop, they are upside-down. I thought we had this problem with iOs pictures fixed two years ago, but it appears to be back.

Yes. The photos I posted in the Mustang thread all display right-side-up on the laptop from which I posted (Windows) and on our Mac ProBook. On my iPhone, many are upside-down or sideways.

In your Crystal thread, the group shot displays sideways on my Windows laptop, but right-side-up on my iPhone.

Very weird.

Fun skiing with you, tseeb. I'm glad John was able to join you at Crystal.
 
flyover":17qel8dz said:
tseeb":17qel8dz said:
Has anyone else noticed that if you look at some of these pictures with iPhone or iPad or download them to Windows laptop, they are upside-down. I thought we had this problem with iOs pictures fixed two years ago, but it appears to be back.

Yes. The photos I posted in the Mustang thread all display right-side-up on the laptop from which I posted (Windows) and on our Mac ProBook. On my iPhone, many are upside-down or sideways.

http://iphonephotographyschool.com/iphone-photos-upside-down/
 
In addition to Picasa (now deprecated) and Quick Time Pro, the previously recommended and free FastStone Image Viewer also makes the correction. You may do this using the same instructions as provided in Marc's linked article for Picasa.
 
I already use FastStone Image viewer on Windows laptop to crop and reduce size of images before posting and they are orientated correctly. I also usually take landscape photos with flash up which means volume buttons are down which should give correct orientation.

Has the size limit gone away? When I download it, I noticed picture flyover posted of me at Apex was 1.4 MB and 2938 X 2203.
 
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