EMSC
Well-known member
Powder day!
While the 5am report was only 4" it snowed hard all morning and day right up through ~3pm when a short slot of sun through cloud kicked in until we made it to the bar at 4:20pm Yes it was that good. We started out skiing a couple of laps on Excelerator where some of the crew could hit groomers while others of us could hit single black powder in the bumps, hallelujah and the trees. Probably started off with 6-8" for those first few runs. Then headed to Resolution with about a foot over there as it's in the lee of the wind at Copper. No one else in the crew this year was interested in trying any of the open bowls due to the low visibility so we headed down a bit and hit Alpine lift three times where fewer folks were skiing and thus more powder was remaining (resolution having gotten mostly skied out by late am). After a short lunch the rest of the group wanted to 'see' some more of the resort and we were on the hunt for any untracked powder. I had a hunch that paid off in spades. (unnamed) lift to (unnamed) trails. The top of (unnamed) is basically at treeline and the wind was picking up making it, errr... uncomfortable for the first 100 vert off the lift (thus so few skiing it), but we did lap after lap of initially untracked off of it until the point that the remaining 6 of us (out of 9) who were handling that pitch and cold basically tracked out some sections of it all by ourselves. As noted above we hit the final lifts all around and didn't get off the mtn till well after the lifts had stopped spinning. A very good day and trip - especially having been planned many months ago.
The odd sidelight of the day involved a random tourist moment of bizarre and yet classic proportions. While trying to decide to eat upstairs or downstairs in the lodge by the Super-B, a random guy walked up to two of us (including me) sitting on a bench and demanded to know why there weren't any groomed slopes and how were tourists like him expected to ski in such crummy snow conditions (as it pounded snow outside of course). My friend Gary M said that we actually come to ski the powder because we liked it... to which the guy got visibly agitated and asked if we were masochists (and for real serious about it too). Etc... about a 2-3 minute conversation where the guy was basically trying to hold the two of us sitting on the bench in the lodge personally responsible for there being powder on the slopes instead of corduroy during the middle of a snowstorm. We kept looking around for the candid camera crew and eventually were 'rescued' out of the situation by another member of our group coming back to let us know where everyone was congregating for lunch. Once it was over I realized it was an instant classic moment that will be told in detail for years to come.
While the 5am report was only 4" it snowed hard all morning and day right up through ~3pm when a short slot of sun through cloud kicked in until we made it to the bar at 4:20pm Yes it was that good. We started out skiing a couple of laps on Excelerator where some of the crew could hit groomers while others of us could hit single black powder in the bumps, hallelujah and the trees. Probably started off with 6-8" for those first few runs. Then headed to Resolution with about a foot over there as it's in the lee of the wind at Copper. No one else in the crew this year was interested in trying any of the open bowls due to the low visibility so we headed down a bit and hit Alpine lift three times where fewer folks were skiing and thus more powder was remaining (resolution having gotten mostly skied out by late am). After a short lunch the rest of the group wanted to 'see' some more of the resort and we were on the hunt for any untracked powder. I had a hunch that paid off in spades. (unnamed) lift to (unnamed) trails. The top of (unnamed) is basically at treeline and the wind was picking up making it, errr... uncomfortable for the first 100 vert off the lift (thus so few skiing it), but we did lap after lap of initially untracked off of it until the point that the remaining 6 of us (out of 9) who were handling that pitch and cold basically tracked out some sections of it all by ourselves. As noted above we hit the final lifts all around and didn't get off the mtn till well after the lifts had stopped spinning. A very good day and trip - especially having been planned many months ago.
The odd sidelight of the day involved a random tourist moment of bizarre and yet classic proportions. While trying to decide to eat upstairs or downstairs in the lodge by the Super-B, a random guy walked up to two of us (including me) sitting on a bench and demanded to know why there weren't any groomed slopes and how were tourists like him expected to ski in such crummy snow conditions (as it pounded snow outside of course). My friend Gary M said that we actually come to ski the powder because we liked it... to which the guy got visibly agitated and asked if we were masochists (and for real serious about it too). Etc... about a 2-3 minute conversation where the guy was basically trying to hold the two of us sitting on the bench in the lodge personally responsible for there being powder on the slopes instead of corduroy during the middle of a snowstorm. We kept looking around for the candid camera crew and eventually were 'rescued' out of the situation by another member of our group coming back to let us know where everyone was congregating for lunch. Once it was over I realized it was an instant classic moment that will be told in detail for years to come.
