Tuesday, March 27, 2018….
The last 4 days has been back to winter conditions with snow coming from the North, North West, West and today the south west and tomorrow its getting back to spring conditions for the next 3 days and closing day is on Monday the 2nd April.
4 days ago I skied one of my favorite lines on Mt Roberts, the Gun Barrel (above) and was the first skier down the run and we had 16cm in 24 hours and as you can see in the photo it was still snowing, I also skied another run on Roberts as well as 5 runs in Paradise before hiking up Roberts.
The following day Brian my touring buddy (in photo above) wanted to go to the Kootney pass which is a hours drive from Rossland.
Like last week when we skied for the first time together in 5 years on Old Glory it was also 5 years ago when both of us had last skied the Kootney pass when we also skied it together.
It was good to ski the pass again especially after getting 30cm + over the previous 24 hours.
When the pass is good it can be the best runs of the season and there can be many best days of the season, that is the nature of ski-in, some days feel like the best ever but its just there are a lot of very good days and they always feel the best.
Where Brian is standing took us a hour and 20 mins to get there and we skied down into the valley and walked up onto the ridge to the left of the taller tree on Brian’s right and skied down through the tree’s from the left to the right of the tall tree back to the valley below.
Then we hiked back onto that ridge again and went right to the small peak on the end of the ridge and skied down the other side and the photo above is the lower section of that slope which goes down to a creek and we hike back up onto the highway you can see on the right of the photo with Brian in it and he hitched up the road and picked the truck up in the car park and came and picked the 3 of us left waiting on the side of the road with all the ski gear.
We did three runs in all and they were all very good and we only heard (yahoo-ing) two groups of others out there but never saw them, its that kind of place.
Its a very big national park with so many mountains to ski tour through, but we always ski the same circuit which starts higher up the highway and we ski three aspects West, East and then North west which takes us back to the highway.
Then yesterday four of us went to the Field of Dream’s with all that fresh snow to be skied only to get there after another hour and 20 minute hike to find it had a Sun crust on it and Don’s wife was going to pick us up along a local highway and bring us back to the hill.
We could ski the crust OK and there was one area where we found some soft snow, The boys said it was the worst best run of the season if you can understand that, its the best run in the area but it was the worst conditions we’d experienced throughout the season,
We got back to the hill and to make up for that bad run I went for another hike onto Record Peak and had a awesome SOFT powder run through the tree’s (above) 🙂
Then today after another 9 cm in 24 hours I hooked up with another touring buddy Chilla and we had 3 good back country powder runs after ski-in 5 runs in Paradise first.
First up we did another run to the left of where I skied yesterday on Record Peak (above) then we did another two runs down a East face off White Wolf ridge and then hiked up onto Mt Roberts and we skied the tree’s back to a lift in Paradise 🙂
The photo above I took today while hiking of the Hoarfrost on the pine needles, it shows the cold winter conditions we have been getting lately even though it is spring now.
With only 6 days left before the season at Red mountain ends we have had powder regularly all winter long which has made it one of the best winters I’ve experienced here which is why I love coming here and its not only the snow conditions but also all the locals and skiers who ski and come back here every winter from all over the world.
As always I’m going to miss this place and the friendly people that are here, it has a GR8 energy about the place and as always I look forward to coming back again which will be the winter of 2019/2020.
Next winter I’ll be in NZ for Xmas where my son Steven, daughter Michelle with grandson Liam and his girl friend are coming from the UK for a Xmas in NZ 🙂