manchester81
New member
First snow report for me.
This part of the world seems to be pretty well covered right now, but I thought I would add another post to the forum.
I am a passholder at Castle, but decided to switch it up this weekend and check out the snow on the other side of the pass.
After a slow morning, I pulled into Fernie at 9:30 and arranged to meet up with a friend at the base of the Bear Chair. Although Fernie's lift system is slowly improving, one of the great hassles of the resort is getting from the base area to the upper parts of the "Old Side". You have a choice between the Deer or Elk chair, both move slowly over flattish terrain, and stop quite often. The Deer Triple reaches its destination a little quicker, but your route to the Bear is a cat track instead of an intermediate cruiser. As I was running late, I chose the Deer and skated hard over to Bear.
My friend had been poking around the Lizzard Bowl while waiting for me, and wasn't all that excited about the conditions. The hill was reporting 20 cm in the last week, but none in the last 48 hours. Obvious lines were skied out and thinks were pretty hard at lower elevations. I suggested taking the Cedar high traverse/hike to Snake Ridge to see if the out of the areas were in better shape. Our first run of the day was "Steep and Deep". While it didn't live up to its name, the snow was soft and skied really well. A couple shots from the midpoint.
After taking the Haul Back out of Currie, we decided to hit the Boomerang area. Linda's run is a favorite here. The entrance isn't really obvious and it isn't marked well. Like steep and deep, the snow was good. A few soft bumps were forming.
We lapped Linda's a few times and then headed back into cedar, this time from the lower Boomerang traverse. We skied the tees in the center of the bowl and eventually angled to KC chutes. These chutes have filled in nicely and were easy to navigate. The snow was a scraped at the top, but fine lower down.
The trail from the Haul Back to Boomerang was starting to look a bit ugly. Coverage was fine, but you had to work a bit to hold an edge, preventing my usual lazy cruise down to Boomerang.
Next we hit up the new side. First run was a short hike up Siberia ridge to sample the trees heading into Siberia Bowl. The snow here was excellent, but a short run followed by a long cat track is not something I like to lap.
Next up was the White Pass. Another short hike to the knot chutes ensured great snow. There was an interesting warning sign at the top of the chutes, and I wish i took a shot of it. The Fernie Patrol certainly has a sense of humour. Anyway, here is a shot looking down the first chute. It takes some careful skiing to navigate this tree band.
From Knots you can catch the white pass again. We did this and took the reverse traverse across the far side of cedar and dropped into the easter bowl region of Lizzard.
That is the last my shots for the day. There was nothing deep, but still plenty of great snow if you are willing to put up with long traverses and/or short hikes. Crowds were modest for a weekend.
After staying overnight at the Raging Elk Hostel, I hit the hill again on Sunday. There was no new snow overnight, and conditions were a bit worse than on Saturday, with some of the lower groomed slopes getting pretty slick. Highlights of the day were Knot Laps and High Lizzard Bowl accessed through the saddles. My friend walked down corner pocket for some nice windbuff. Corner pocket is one of the strangest chutes I have encountered. It is wide enough to ski, but I think a lot of people chose to sideslip, scraping bare. The resort responded by placing rubber tires over the rock and hanging a rope to assist people with the decent. I wasn't about to try to connect the patches of snow that were available to I did the rope assisted side step down the tires. My buddy, a boarder did a not so graceful but slide (just lifted his board and lowered down the rope. Unfortunately, I don't have any action shots, but here is Rob posing for the camera at the bottom.
All in all, a good weekend, but I will wait for another dump before heading back.
This part of the world seems to be pretty well covered right now, but I thought I would add another post to the forum.
I am a passholder at Castle, but decided to switch it up this weekend and check out the snow on the other side of the pass.
After a slow morning, I pulled into Fernie at 9:30 and arranged to meet up with a friend at the base of the Bear Chair. Although Fernie's lift system is slowly improving, one of the great hassles of the resort is getting from the base area to the upper parts of the "Old Side". You have a choice between the Deer or Elk chair, both move slowly over flattish terrain, and stop quite often. The Deer Triple reaches its destination a little quicker, but your route to the Bear is a cat track instead of an intermediate cruiser. As I was running late, I chose the Deer and skated hard over to Bear.
My friend had been poking around the Lizzard Bowl while waiting for me, and wasn't all that excited about the conditions. The hill was reporting 20 cm in the last week, but none in the last 48 hours. Obvious lines were skied out and thinks were pretty hard at lower elevations. I suggested taking the Cedar high traverse/hike to Snake Ridge to see if the out of the areas were in better shape. Our first run of the day was "Steep and Deep". While it didn't live up to its name, the snow was soft and skied really well. A couple shots from the midpoint.
After taking the Haul Back out of Currie, we decided to hit the Boomerang area. Linda's run is a favorite here. The entrance isn't really obvious and it isn't marked well. Like steep and deep, the snow was good. A few soft bumps were forming.
We lapped Linda's a few times and then headed back into cedar, this time from the lower Boomerang traverse. We skied the tees in the center of the bowl and eventually angled to KC chutes. These chutes have filled in nicely and were easy to navigate. The snow was a scraped at the top, but fine lower down.
The trail from the Haul Back to Boomerang was starting to look a bit ugly. Coverage was fine, but you had to work a bit to hold an edge, preventing my usual lazy cruise down to Boomerang.
Next we hit up the new side. First run was a short hike up Siberia ridge to sample the trees heading into Siberia Bowl. The snow here was excellent, but a short run followed by a long cat track is not something I like to lap.
Next up was the White Pass. Another short hike to the knot chutes ensured great snow. There was an interesting warning sign at the top of the chutes, and I wish i took a shot of it. The Fernie Patrol certainly has a sense of humour. Anyway, here is a shot looking down the first chute. It takes some careful skiing to navigate this tree band.
From Knots you can catch the white pass again. We did this and took the reverse traverse across the far side of cedar and dropped into the easter bowl region of Lizzard.
That is the last my shots for the day. There was nothing deep, but still plenty of great snow if you are willing to put up with long traverses and/or short hikes. Crowds were modest for a weekend.
After staying overnight at the Raging Elk Hostel, I hit the hill again on Sunday. There was no new snow overnight, and conditions were a bit worse than on Saturday, with some of the lower groomed slopes getting pretty slick. Highlights of the day were Knot Laps and High Lizzard Bowl accessed through the saddles. My friend walked down corner pocket for some nice windbuff. Corner pocket is one of the strangest chutes I have encountered. It is wide enough to ski, but I think a lot of people chose to sideslip, scraping bare. The resort responded by placing rubber tires over the rock and hanging a rope to assist people with the decent. I wasn't about to try to connect the patches of snow that were available to I did the rope assisted side step down the tires. My buddy, a boarder did a not so graceful but slide (just lifted his board and lowered down the rope. Unfortunately, I don't have any action shots, but here is Rob posing for the camera at the bottom.
All in all, a good weekend, but I will wait for another dump before heading back.
