Monday, Dec. 19th:
The day started at 7 a.m. I peeked outside the van, couldn’t see anything, and realized it was nuking so hard that the end of the parking lot was not visible. Luckily I prepared for this and parked directly outside the resort. I was in line 20 minutes later.
So many people were checking the Gnorm G. Gnormansson the Pow Gnome webcam that the site was down and I couldn’t see the report, but it was pretty obvious it was going to be insane.
Finally it was 8:30 and we headed up the hill. It was getting way deep. There was electricity in the air. It was snowing really, really hard.
The top of the Stoke was a different world and the snow drifts were just nutty. I immediately dipped into Clyde’s Secret Glades and skied thigh deep blower all the way to the bottom. They might as well have been a complete secret because they were untouched. The snow quality was impeccable. If eating snow is equivalent to drinking exhaust, then I drank so much exhaust today.
The opening were staggered, so there was untouched pow refreshers like every hour or so. First it was North Bowl, then the entire lower mountain, which, when done from the opening of the Jalapeno glades, was one of the single longest entirely pow runs of my life – 4000 feet or something. The feeling in my soul was indescribable, mainly because I don’t know how to put such heavenly bliss and simultaneous anguish and exhaustion into words.
When we cruised over to the Ripper, it was waist deep because of all the wind loading. Obviously, it can never be too deep, but it might have been too deep. At some points, it wasn’t really skiing, just sort of pushing around in the snow and laughing hysterically.
In the days of lore, great kings and their retinue were known to over indulge in food, drink and merriment after great successes in battle, statecraft, or just for the hell of it. It was common for folks to party for days on end, eating and drinking, throwing up, and continuing without a glitch. That’s pretty much analogous to what we were doing at Revelstoke by about 1 p.m. in the afternoon. We had all skied so much blower pow, like the equivalent of drinking 15 beers worth, and our legs were smoked.
At one point I fell over and just laid there – not like some dumb snowboarders, more like an antelope finally giving in after a days-long pursuit by endurance hunters. Luckily, I was also the hunter…the pow hunter.
That’s when I knew it I had to go into overdrive. I headed back into the lines and continued to pump out Stoke laps, because…it was so good that it was be a crime not to.
Tuesday was more of the same.
Amazing conditions, with North Bowl totally wind loaded all tracks erased from the night before. By the end of the day everybody was hacking their way down the mountain because our legs were one collective vat of lactic acid.
Weather Forecast:
Other Misc. Photos:
