Powder day!!

Pretty hard blowing snow at the lookout - time to move on
Wow, I must say that - when I mentioned how badly I was looking forword to a powder day in my last post, I didn't expect it to arrive so quickly. If I realized I had any influence at all I should have pined for world peace or lottery winnings.... but instead I got a good dump of snow - and I'll take it! To be fair, we didn't really get all that much snow  (maybe 4 or 5 inches) but in this sparse winter where snow seems to be a rare commodity, it did wonders to improve the skiing in the park. I took Friday afternoon off to go out - mid storm - and enjoy the maelstrom first hand. Skied a lot of the bc trails in the park which almost instantly were transformed from crusty tracks to a carpet of light fluff. A little amazed to realize that this was the first real ski on my wideboards this season and I had forgotten a little of the technique... but it came to me pretty quickly and the conditions were pretty forgiving. Skied for 3 hours before I started to get pretty cold. It was actually pretty close to 0C but with all the snow thumping down I was pretty much soaked through. Despite a little hesitation I opted to head for home with a final swoosh down to the car... and then a modest shovelling to get the car out.

(Yes, Mike ;) A fresh blanket of snow makes us all happy!

Over the bridge and through the woods... on untracked powder
Saturday I figured I still had a chance for some fresh tracks if I went alllll the way out to the Eardley escarpment trailhead. Not really an official parking lot, it marks the end of trail 56 which is the most northerly trail in the park. It's also a shortcut into Lac Richard yurt and sure enough I met the group staying at the yurt on the road waiting for some friends who would join them for a second night. They would be the only people I would see all day. After I skied up to the yurt in their tracks, the snow was unbroken and I had my work cut out for me for the rest of the day (until I turned around). I made a blistering pace of 3km/hr on my way out which is pretty much walking pace for those keeping track. Of course walking down a sidewalk doesn't compare to plowing through 10 - 20 cm of untracked snow not to mention climbing a pretty significant ridge. It would of course all pay off when I looped back and got to speed along my broken track and enjoy the swooping descents. This was also my first chance to see the repair work done to the trail after the washouts last summer. Some might recall the giant "elephant traps" left behind by the summer rains which I posted back in October. Well it was good to see almost all of them were repaired. The trail was smooth and even and excellent skiing. The small "ditches" that didn't get fixed were small in comaprison and easy to ski around. They probably ran out of time to get to them... so perhaps next season they'll be fixed up. Spent a little time at the (unofficial) lookout enjoying the view and making a few turns before heading for home.
Enjoying the "Pontiac" view

Skiing home on hard fought tracks
Glad Mother nature finally checked her calender and realized we'd had enough rain/freezing rain events and were long past due for a little powder snowstorm
Even the trees seem happier