As on my previous 4 visits to Rossland, I stayed at Angela's Place http://www.visitangela.com/ , which was first recommended to me by Leslie Anthony back in 1997. Angela Price has been in Rossland a long time and had been kind enough to come out and ski with me 3 of my 5 visits. In 2000 with Adam there was no powder but still very good skiing. 2005 with Al Solish was a week after the infamous Tropical Punch and strictly groomers with off-piste all refrozen.
This year the rain arrived on our ski day. We chatted with Angela on the phone about 7:30AM, could have gone for another day at Whitewater, but the predicted rain/snow line was near the bottom of Red and we agreed to take a shot at it. We took our time with a nice breakfast at Circle Cafe in Nelson, drove to Angela's place, dropped off some luggage and headed up to the mountain together. We arrived about 10:30 and met a steady stream of soaked locals coming up to Angela and telling her how bad it was (wet snow plus pea soup fog up high) and that for visitors it was not worth buying a ticket.
As we had comped tickets and it was no longer raining we decided to check it out anyway. We first went up the Red chair and took a short break by Poochy's Cabin.
Poochy's is one of several informal cabins built in the woods at Red over the years. I skied maybe 500 vertical in the trees below there. The wet snow was sometimes consolidated enough to ski well but often heavy and harder to push around.
Next time up Red Angela took us slightly out of bounds to an abandoned mineshaft. Due to bad visibility we approached cautiously and not from above and so just saw the rocks above the entry from maybe 20 feet below. For a rare occasion in Angela's memory she recommended an easy cruiser on the Silverlode chair before heading up to the top of Granite. Here's the upper part of the chair ride on Motherlode.
I'm more resistant to vertigo than most skiers but did not even contemplate skiing down under the lift in this area.
It was not easy to keep together on Ridge Road before we dropped into the Meadows trees and skied into the back of Paradise Lodge for lunch. The upper mountain had probably received a mix of rain and snow. It wasn't powder/packed powder but it was more supportable and less grabby than the snow lower down on Red.
After lunch we skied one more run somewhere in the Paradise trees. We returned to the base mostly along the Ridge Road and Rino's Run groomers but took one detour through Oil Can, the shortest of the steep runs on the north side of Granite. Liz coming though that:
It's steeper than it looks from the pic, and navigation is important getting into many of those north side trees.
Liz showed us the Stagger Inn, another one of the local cabins just off Rino's Run.
From there we skied to the base for some drinks in Red's popular bar on the second floor of the lodge. Here I am with 2 skis that I owned.
The SM's were the first ski I bought new, in 1979.
Red will be expanding to to Grey Mt. perhaps as soon as next season. This will give them some much needed intermediate terrain and expand their already impressive sidecountry option. Cat skiing on Grey is offered this season when conditions are good.
This year the rain arrived on our ski day. We chatted with Angela on the phone about 7:30AM, could have gone for another day at Whitewater, but the predicted rain/snow line was near the bottom of Red and we agreed to take a shot at it. We took our time with a nice breakfast at Circle Cafe in Nelson, drove to Angela's place, dropped off some luggage and headed up to the mountain together. We arrived about 10:30 and met a steady stream of soaked locals coming up to Angela and telling her how bad it was (wet snow plus pea soup fog up high) and that for visitors it was not worth buying a ticket.
As we had comped tickets and it was no longer raining we decided to check it out anyway. We first went up the Red chair and took a short break by Poochy's Cabin.
Poochy's is one of several informal cabins built in the woods at Red over the years. I skied maybe 500 vertical in the trees below there. The wet snow was sometimes consolidated enough to ski well but often heavy and harder to push around.
Next time up Red Angela took us slightly out of bounds to an abandoned mineshaft. Due to bad visibility we approached cautiously and not from above and so just saw the rocks above the entry from maybe 20 feet below. For a rare occasion in Angela's memory she recommended an easy cruiser on the Silverlode chair before heading up to the top of Granite. Here's the upper part of the chair ride on Motherlode.
I'm more resistant to vertigo than most skiers but did not even contemplate skiing down under the lift in this area.
It was not easy to keep together on Ridge Road before we dropped into the Meadows trees and skied into the back of Paradise Lodge for lunch. The upper mountain had probably received a mix of rain and snow. It wasn't powder/packed powder but it was more supportable and less grabby than the snow lower down on Red.
After lunch we skied one more run somewhere in the Paradise trees. We returned to the base mostly along the Ridge Road and Rino's Run groomers but took one detour through Oil Can, the shortest of the steep runs on the north side of Granite. Liz coming though that:
It's steeper than it looks from the pic, and navigation is important getting into many of those north side trees.
Liz showed us the Stagger Inn, another one of the local cabins just off Rino's Run.
From there we skied to the base for some drinks in Red's popular bar on the second floor of the lodge. Here I am with 2 skis that I owned.
The SM's were the first ski I bought new, in 1979.
Red will be expanding to to Grey Mt. perhaps as soon as next season. This will give them some much needed intermediate terrain and expand their already impressive sidecountry option. Cat skiing on Grey is offered this season when conditions are good.
