Symphony lift opened today after avalanche control made Flute Bowl safe. An arriving weather system brought continuous snowfall all day, but it also came with whipping winds and lower temperatures. The 1000-meter freezing level made for snowfall for most of the mountains from around halfway up to the midstation. When we reached the top of the Whistler gondola, winds were pretty high and visibility quite poor. The lights were green, so we began traversing over to the Harmony lift and rode it up through the blizzard conditions to the top, where the winds were biting, and the visibility down to below 50-meters. We’ve dropped into Harmony bowl on many an occasion in marginal weather, but this pretty much beat all previous “poor judgement” descents. Turning from the first pitch onto the second, the visibility dropped to the point that it was riding by inertial guidance only, tracking from one course marker dot to the next. Continue reading ‘Welcome to the White Room’
Archive for the 'Snow' Category
Page 11 of 14
We hit Whistler on Monday and Tuesday. There was a good amount of snowfall on both days, supposedly around 15cm settled times two days, but the high freezing level made for some sticky, packing snow on Monday. It was pretty much snow flurries at the top of green chair, and rain halfway down. It was gruelling and miserable. The snow was soft, but very heavy and difficult to ride on. Tuesday had a higher freezing level and more new snow, so we returned to Whistler to crank some stashes of untracked, deep powder. The alpine areas were still undergoing avalanche control, so were not open. It was still raining down at the green chair base, but it wasn’t too bad. At least the snow was soft. Today, they opened Seventh Heaven up again, so we returned to Blackcomb. Two days worth of deep snow made for lots of fun in the gladed areas. The open bowls were pretty windswept, and there was not much new development over what was there on Sunday. Hopefully the Whistler alpine areas will be open tomorrow so we will have some new powder to cut up. Rain will probably return to the area tomorrow afternoon, but hopefully the freezing level will remain low. I’m not really optomistic. Continue reading ‘Rain, Snow, and Freezing Level’
It was drizzling in town as forecast, so we headed up to Seventh Heaven on Blackcomb to stay above the freezing level. Snow was soft in places, but not “powder”. Sticky and slow. There was a fairly good windchill up top, with a serious headwind heading down the first pitch that combined with the sticky snow to prevent forward motion. Most areas were pretty ridden out, but there were a few stashes here and there. We rode down throught the terrain garden on our last run down, then caught the lift back up to the top and rode PTP over to Whistler then downloaded on the gondola – no point in burning out our legs and wasting time on krappy conditions on the rideout! Are we “snow snobs”? Supposedly there’s more rain overnight and tomorrow with the same 1800 meter freezing level, possibly some high winds, maybe subsiding tomorrow. Whee. Doesn’t look good for tomorrow… To sprinkle powdered sugar on our already dubious day, when we went by Sushi-ya for dinner, the space was dark, and there was what looked like a “this space available” sign in the window. Fabio went upstairs and there was no “we’ve moved to…” sign on the door. Guess our favorite sushi place in Whistler is no more. Boo. Sachi Sushi was our fall-back. Sushi was good except for maybe the BBQ smoked salmon roll, which was a little on the dry side. The beef tataki was ma-ma. Chocolate ice cream at Cows made everything all better. Continue reading ‘First Snowboarding Day of 2010’
Okay, we’re here now. Check-in was as slow as usual in HNL, but security was quick and professional, so we got through in time to go to KBC for some wings, pizzas and beer. The two pizzas were $20 USD each (ouch!), but were excellent. All told, we ended up dropping $31 USD each for everything including a good tip for the cool server dude. We met Kevin and Naomi at the gate, and we were shortly boarded. The center overhead bins in the 767-300-2 (four-door/no overwing exits) were a little small for the Kifaru X-Ray with side pockets, so I had to pull the laptop power supply and ultrapod out and put them inside the pack for the bin to close. On takeoff, a bad baby immediately set to screeching and wailing inconsolably, but after bevvie service, the turbulence set in and I was rocked to sleep. Continue reading ‘In Whistler’
Yeah yeah, what the heck was I doing waiting until the day before leaving for trip to set up new bindings. Well, they’re newer year of the same model I currently run, the Flow Teams and there are no changes to the geometry. Just have to match up settings and should be good to go. Right. So two days before departure I finally tried to setup the new bindings to discover new fastners. While I’m glad Flow listened and did something about the tendancy of their previous fastners to work loose, this was ridiculous. Continue reading ‘Chine?!’
Picked up a little canister stove at the Snow Peak store in Shiroishi while in Sapporo. Most Snow Peak stuff is available on the USDM, but after the first year, Snow Peak USA removed this particular item from their product listing, though you may still find remaining stock here and there. I’m not really sure what’s up with that. All the specifications and information is readily available online, so I’ll just go over some of the things I noticed. It is really small, but it isn’t particularly light. I only say this because I picked up the aluminum-bodied Ultralight version. Granted the ultralight doesn’t have an igniter which means you have to add weight elsewhere by carrying a lighter or matches. Continue reading ‘Snow Peak Gigapower Micro Max Stove Titanium’
Ugh. Snowbird left me a present too.
This time I was in a hurry, so the patch is pretty caveman.
Just got back from Japan. JO 084 from Nagoya had a good tailwind, so came in about half-an-hour early. There was a fair amount of turbulence though, but not as much as would have been expected from the doom notices given by the flight crew before takeoff. I could immediately see why I couldn’t get my customary “C” seat, since the majority of the flight was taken up by a school trip. Nothing quite like being surrounded by shrieking schoolgirls! Too bad I was instead seated next to all the freak “normal” passengers, like the girl next to me with her overdone fingernails who stirred her food but didn’t eat any of it, and goofy ADD hip-hop sideways hat nervous energy dude whose mere presence made me want to just clobber him.
(0)The predicted snowfall for the latter part of Friday didn’t materialize until Saturday morning. I awoke to the sound of a snow blower around the corner and the guys over at Nissan shoveling snow with the big plastic scoop. In deep winter there would be the front-end loader rumbling up and down the street. In a light flurry of giant conglomerated snowflakes, we headed over to the JR Sapporo-eki to catch a bus up to Sounkyo-onsen. It wasn’t immediately clear which stop was the correct one, but we were told to wait inside instead of a the platforms. Eventually, some uniformed attendants with signage appeared and set us up with seating assignments and got us queued up for the buses. It was Saturday, so there were enough people for 1.5 buses. Occasionally, a heavy flurry of large, round conglomerated snow would beat down then stop. Continue reading ‘Sounkyo He!’
There was supposed to be some precipitation of some kind overnight on Thursday, but not a whole bunch came to pass. It was my last riding opportunity on this trip, so I bit the bullet and headed out – albeit late – for the bus terminal. I generally avoid the later buses because the subway rides over to the bus terminal get progressively more crowded as the school and work rush kicks in. At least this time I was encapsulated in schoolgirls instead of tobacco-stink oyaji on the tight train. I got my dirtbag feed bag from 7-11 – a coffee, an Aquarius, and three onigiri – and headed up to Oodori and crossed the street to the terminal. I was early, but inside was crowded, so I waited out by the platforms and watched the clockwork comings and goings of both scheduled long-haul buses and city buses. My bus arrived, and with one couple, the bus started out on the journey to Kokusai. A significant number of people got on at JR Sapporo, but other than around three or so, the remainder were Korean tourists, all reeking of the requisite tourist fare, “Ghengis Khan”, the mutton yakiniku that all local and foreign guidebooks demand of visitors to Sapporo. A note to those of you who haven’t experienced this stuff yet – go at the end of your trip, since even if you put your jacket in the plastic bags that many places provide, the stink will transfer off your clothes afterwards and you’ll end up smelling like a barbecue joint for the remainder of your trip. Continue reading ‘Hard Day’s Ride’