Tseeb and I drove about 1.5 hours from Kelowna south to Penticton, then up to Apex Alpine. Flyover and John had driven up from Seattle the previous day and stayed overnight at the mountain. With 5 inches new overnight they got a couple of runs in before we arrived. It continued to snow all morning, when there were a few locals around, but by noon it was very quiet despite the powder lasting most of the day.
There is a small amount of alpine terrain near the 7,200 foot summit, but there were enough trees around to maintain adequate visibility even when it was snowing. Our first runs Great Wall, Pit and Sun Bowl were just skier's right of the main Quickdraw chair of 1,900 vertical. Steep sections would occasionally scrape a subsurface, but mellower pitches were nearly all powder. This included some of the lower mountain blue groomers like Wild Bill and Little Joe, as well as patches next to the skiercross course.
Terrain just skier's left of Quickdraw like Grouse Gulch and Chute was more consistently pitched for less bottoming out and also offered a few shots in the trees. We also took a couple of laps far skier's right into the Wildside area. This was almost completely untracked but there were only a couple of inches new snow over the subsurface. This area had partial south exposure (we think, since it was thick overcast the whole time) but I think the snow was probably less deep due to wind exposure. Skiing Wildside takes you to the slow 1,000 vertical Stock's chair, which was the only lift open on my first visit in 1999. We took a late lunch after our second run out there.
After lunch we checked out Apex' steepest but shorter runs to far skier's left. These usually sport serious moguls but are also direct north facing. When we scraped an occasional firm subsurface even in the trees we concluded that there had been some rain a week earlier, which I verified at the office at the end of the day. Nonetheless most of the snow was powder and only lightly tracked so we skied 4 runs out there, Make My Day, Peashooter, Magnum and Gromit.
I skied 27,100 vertical, 14K of powder. Naturally I was skiing my new DPS Wailer 112's for the first time since Japan. Apex has by far the lowest skier density in its ski region, and that really paid off on this day. Sorry, no pics due to the weather and the brisk pace. Flyover hit 30K, impressive for a telemark warm-up to Mustang Snowcat.
There is a small amount of alpine terrain near the 7,200 foot summit, but there were enough trees around to maintain adequate visibility even when it was snowing. Our first runs Great Wall, Pit and Sun Bowl were just skier's right of the main Quickdraw chair of 1,900 vertical. Steep sections would occasionally scrape a subsurface, but mellower pitches were nearly all powder. This included some of the lower mountain blue groomers like Wild Bill and Little Joe, as well as patches next to the skiercross course.
Terrain just skier's left of Quickdraw like Grouse Gulch and Chute was more consistently pitched for less bottoming out and also offered a few shots in the trees. We also took a couple of laps far skier's right into the Wildside area. This was almost completely untracked but there were only a couple of inches new snow over the subsurface. This area had partial south exposure (we think, since it was thick overcast the whole time) but I think the snow was probably less deep due to wind exposure. Skiing Wildside takes you to the slow 1,000 vertical Stock's chair, which was the only lift open on my first visit in 1999. We took a late lunch after our second run out there.
After lunch we checked out Apex' steepest but shorter runs to far skier's left. These usually sport serious moguls but are also direct north facing. When we scraped an occasional firm subsurface even in the trees we concluded that there had been some rain a week earlier, which I verified at the office at the end of the day. Nonetheless most of the snow was powder and only lightly tracked so we skied 4 runs out there, Make My Day, Peashooter, Magnum and Gromit.
I skied 27,100 vertical, 14K of powder. Naturally I was skiing my new DPS Wailer 112's for the first time since Japan. Apex has by far the lowest skier density in its ski region, and that really paid off on this day. Sorry, no pics due to the weather and the brisk pace. Flyover hit 30K, impressive for a telemark warm-up to Mustang Snowcat.
