After being closed for 3 days in a row due to wind and rain, I was quite skeptical as to what the conditions would be like today. My heart would break each of the last 3 days as I would look at the time lapsed images of the Turoa webcams to see the white snow melting away and exposing that jagged, volcanic rock. Lucky for us, the temps dropped enough yesterday to bring some snow and the upper mountain was actually skiing very well.

In fact, the upper mountain was so much fun that we managed to squeeze every last run out of the day (boarded last chair on the Highnoon Express at 3:59). There was chalky, windblown snow all around the upper mountain and quite a few soft landings under cliff and cornice drops. Vertigo held some amazing snow all day, as well as little bowl, which was left ungroomed. The Keyhole drop was the smallest I’ve seen it all year due to a nice wind drift in the landing, but was still really fun. With more snow in the forecast, let’s hope to cover up the rest of these cookies down low so that we can finally ski some of this awesome terrain down low.

Photo Tour