Whistler, BC March 6-9, 2019

EMSC

Well-known member
A much delayed TR. I wrote it up once but somewhere along the way the web browser freaked out and refreshed the page and I couldn't recover it... and that was the only time I've had in weeks to try to post until now.

This trip is the annual guys trip I go on. And yes just as I flew north Colo was hammered with snow and crazy levels of avalanches. Meanwhile WB had been getting small, but infrequent refreshes of snow with perhaps 10” about a week prior to our arrival. Fortunately temps had been staying quite cool for WB for March (chilly, but not truly cold). WB had had good snows YTD so everything was open with good base depths.

The lower 1000’ vert was rock hard icy with ‘frozen granular’ wisps on top really. The upper mountain was fortunately chalky for the most part (occasional rock hard patch – eg the entrance to Whistler Bowl). And then we got 4-6” of new snow starting the afternoon of day 1 and also in squalls on day 2.

Day 1: just two of us showed early on this trip and we spent it spent on Whistler side, initially on the steeper upper portion of the mtn (whistler bowl, surprise, west cirque, doom & gloom) and eventually after lunch when snow started to fall decently we relegated ourselves to a couple of gladed runs that actually had the best and softest snow of the day (unsanctioned, club 21, side order).

Day 2: Spent mostly on Whistler side again, with most everyone there. Started with free parking on the Creekside base. Had ~4” of soft new snow on the upper mountain which helped the skiing by quite a bit. Much less firm to deal with and mostly soft. Eventually we made our way over to Blackcomb side after lunch and not quite braille’d our way down ruby bowl in very nice conditions. Between the not-big snow report and clouds/fog moving in and out, very few had skied any of the Spanky’s ladder options. Once back across the peak to peak lift to head down to the car there was a section approx. 1500 vert tall that was so foggy that we actually got lost and ended up at Garbonzo lift instead of Creekside. Not sure if that says something about me, or about just how foggy it was (I’m going with the latter).

Day 3: Sunny and chilly start meant a race to Blackcomb for the portion of the group I ski with. We actually started with a run on the glacier (skiers left/steeper side) in 6” of fresh powder that was pretty close to un-skied. Then we hit many laps on Spanky’s ladder hitting all of the bowls and more than one laps in a couple of them (eg Garnet, Ruby, Diamond). Hitting initially lightly tracked snow and eventually more tracked up skiing, but still nicely soft. After a rather late lunch we hit Saudan couloir right above the rendezvous lodge. It was tough in part due to some high clouds making the light flat in very mogulled terrain at the top.

Day 4: Sunny again with a similar story as day 3. Lots of laps in Spanky’s ladder until lunch. Then I went back over to the Whistler side to do a lap in the one steep section of Whistler I had not seen yet – West bowl.

Overall a very good ski trip on excellent terrain, especially since when I boarded the plane in Denver there was no snow forecast for the entire trip and really surface conditions were mostly saved by the 4-6” of upper mtn snowfall. Interestingly enough, if the guys trip had been in Colorado there would have been some days that we would not have been able to get to desired ski places due to I-70 closures from avalanches and control work…

LOTS of pics coming up (couple of posts worth)

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I've been posting so few action pics this year... I'm going to make up for it in this one TR :-D

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