grantbowen
New member
Pleasantly Surprised sums up my impression of the conditions on my first day at Whistler this year. Sure, just over 72 cm (about 28") is a low snow pack for Whistler and I usually don't go until it hits 100 cms., but the fact that they opened the Peak and Harmony told me there had to be more snow up high than the official number indicated, and it was true.
Off the Peak, only Whistler bowl was officially open. As we were skiing with the child we did not sample it but many were and it looked, from the chair at least, to be pretty nice. In fact all the snow at the higher elevations that had not been groomed was soft. Grooming appears to have been done during the recent stretch of inversions and probably had been melted and frozen. They had announced 2 new cms but it felt like much more, especially up high. People were hitting places like the Horseshoes chutes and I even made a run down the camel humps under Harmony, praying I didn't find the one rock still not buried. I was lucky.
One bad point: they had endless mechanical issues this day. The Village Gondola on Whistler never opened. Anyone wanting to get up Whistler Mountain from the Village had to take a shuttle 5 miles to Creekside. It made for a nice quiet first hour or two but a very long line to download to Creekside. Harmony also had a number of long stoppages and once closed for half an hour. Luckily we were in the line, not on the chair, and only had to ski out to the Emerald chair. In fact, every chair we rode had some kind of longer-than-usual stoppage. Hope they work out the bugs soon!
The forecast for this week looks promising with the bigger dump coming Thursday. I am up there for the whole weekend so hopefully the snow will continue to fall!
Off the Peak, only Whistler bowl was officially open. As we were skiing with the child we did not sample it but many were and it looked, from the chair at least, to be pretty nice. In fact all the snow at the higher elevations that had not been groomed was soft. Grooming appears to have been done during the recent stretch of inversions and probably had been melted and frozen. They had announced 2 new cms but it felt like much more, especially up high. People were hitting places like the Horseshoes chutes and I even made a run down the camel humps under Harmony, praying I didn't find the one rock still not buried. I was lucky.
One bad point: they had endless mechanical issues this day. The Village Gondola on Whistler never opened. Anyone wanting to get up Whistler Mountain from the Village had to take a shuttle 5 miles to Creekside. It made for a nice quiet first hour or two but a very long line to download to Creekside. Harmony also had a number of long stoppages and once closed for half an hour. Luckily we were in the line, not on the chair, and only had to ski out to the Emerald chair. In fact, every chair we rode had some kind of longer-than-usual stoppage. Hope they work out the bugs soon!
The forecast for this week looks promising with the bigger dump coming Thursday. I am up there for the whole weekend so hopefully the snow will continue to fall!