Last time I wrote I said there was snow in the forecast and in the morning there was a nice sunrise ( taken from the front door) the sunrise and sunset to me normally means the weather is changing and there is a front on the way, which it did but unfortunately we only got 1cm which is nothing really.
Dan and I have only been out a few times ski touring hunting for some un tracked decent snow to ski, below we found some on the west aspect slope and that day we did have 3 good run’s, two on the west and one down a North east off the same ridge line back to the ski area.
So most days we have been ski-in groomers on the ski area, the first 3 weeks we were ski-in 50 to 60cm of nice dry snow in the mountains, mostly back country but the last three weeks the ski area has been where we’ve skied the most and we’ve been cruising compared to touring backcountry even though I’d rather be doing the latter, obviously :-).
Just being here in Rossland and ski-in Red is the best, even when there is no fresh snow to ski, its a GR8 atmosphere here and the community is very social even in times of Covid, everyone is friendly, we keep our distance and wear masks but the communication is still there and everyone is happy having fun in the mountains (Photo above). We have our bubbles and we get together for Pizza nights once a week and we invite each other round for dinner on occasion’s, the ones outside the bubbles we see each other on the hill.
Wanaka used to be like that in the 90’s but since the wealth of the town has increased the socialising has got less, not here in Rossland and Red mountain, the energy is the same as it was in the 90’s. The property prices have risen but not as crazy as in Wanaka, I still see the same people I saw when I first came here in 99 and the early 2000’s, with a lot of new ones I’ve met since who always come here to ski.
Old house’s have come down and been replaced with nice new one’s that suit the mountain’s around the town. Also because we are at a 1000 meters there is snow all over the town so it very much feels like a ski town and in January I skied 25 days out of the 31, most people here do that.
In my last post I said we skied the “Field of Dream’s”. From there I took the above photo with the South and SW aspects of Mt Roberts on the right, we always ski this aspect or the north aspect as part of our daily back country tour.
On the left is Granite mountain, you can see the groomed runs of the Paradise ski area and the Kootney sea (inversion cloud) behind the mountains, with Rossland under the clouds on the right behind Roberts.
Above is the sunset with the west side of Rossland in the photo, time spent here is a real joy from sunrise to Sunset 🙂