The 1,200 miles of driving plus 4 hours of skiing over 3 days was wearing me down some. Accordingly I only skied Kicking Horse for 2.5 hours and 10,100 vertical. But this was my 13th ski day there in 12 different seasons, so I could survey the area and assess current conditions. As I mentioned elsewhere this is the 6th day here on the Tuesday following the President's (US) or Family Day (Canada) holiday and it was by far the busiest. The gondola line at !0;30AM was about 20 minutes.
Temperature was around 15F with no wind, but there was heavy overcast and flat light when I got off the gondola. I peered into Crystal Bowl with minimal definition, but when another skier dropped in and his turns looked like smooth snow I followed. Pic of that area from below:
The steep chutes dropping north from CPR and Redemption Ridges can be intimidating, but they are as wide this year as I have ever seen. Under different circumstances in past seasons I would have been all over those runs with this year's coverage from the record December snowfall.
I rode the Stairway to Heaven chair twice. The south facing fall lines under the lift sounded a bit noisy, so I skied the Blue Heaven Bowl from the top, smooth but still in somewhat flat light. View of the chair from below:
Next time up the chair the sky brightened some from thinning clouds. I thus caught a break skiing Horse Fly into Feuz Bowl. View up from there:
At this time the fog bank had settled mid-mountain, fortunately below tree line. I skied the blue Grizzly Paw run to bottom, more work than I expected. I did not see any of the lower blue runs freshly groomed, surprising as in the past decade there have always been a couple of them.
At 12:30 lunchtime the gondola line was down to less than 5 minutes during lunch, so I went for one more ride. I Skied Bowl Over this time, again having decent light in the alpine.
This time lower down I skied the green Downshift catwalk to conserve energy for the next 3 days of snowcat skiing at Chatter Creek. I got off the hill at 1:30 and drove to Donald airport for the heli pickup at 2:30.
Chatter is the most remote cat skiing lodge in Canada, a 20 minute heli flight. A couple of pics on this not very photogenic day:
If the heli is grounded it takes 3.5 hours by bus and snowcat to get in or out. That happened to me only once out of 8 transfers from 2007-2010.
Temperature was around 15F with no wind, but there was heavy overcast and flat light when I got off the gondola. I peered into Crystal Bowl with minimal definition, but when another skier dropped in and his turns looked like smooth snow I followed. Pic of that area from below:
The steep chutes dropping north from CPR and Redemption Ridges can be intimidating, but they are as wide this year as I have ever seen. Under different circumstances in past seasons I would have been all over those runs with this year's coverage from the record December snowfall.
I rode the Stairway to Heaven chair twice. The south facing fall lines under the lift sounded a bit noisy, so I skied the Blue Heaven Bowl from the top, smooth but still in somewhat flat light. View of the chair from below:
Next time up the chair the sky brightened some from thinning clouds. I thus caught a break skiing Horse Fly into Feuz Bowl. View up from there:
At this time the fog bank had settled mid-mountain, fortunately below tree line. I skied the blue Grizzly Paw run to bottom, more work than I expected. I did not see any of the lower blue runs freshly groomed, surprising as in the past decade there have always been a couple of them.
At 12:30 lunchtime the gondola line was down to less than 5 minutes during lunch, so I went for one more ride. I Skied Bowl Over this time, again having decent light in the alpine.
This time lower down I skied the green Downshift catwalk to conserve energy for the next 3 days of snowcat skiing at Chatter Creek. I got off the hill at 1:30 and drove to Donald airport for the heli pickup at 2:30.
Chatter is the most remote cat skiing lodge in Canada, a 20 minute heli flight. A couple of pics on this not very photogenic day:
If the heli is grounded it takes 3.5 hours by bus and snowcat to get in or out. That happened to me only once out of 8 transfers from 2007-2010.