Numero Dos

Ski day number 2 for the 09-10 season. After Friday's sweet and deep turns the freezing levels rose and it rained cats and dogs. In fact it was flooded it Courtenay after we got 7inches of rain or something. The snowpack essentially got knocked in half, but the bottom half is bomber now. Fortunately rain turned to snow on Monday and it's been snowing ever since. I headed up for a quick run to see how the new snow was bonding with the raincrust. It's now buried about 40cms down with ski pen's around 15-20cms. Fortunately the new snow has bonded well with the crust and it came in right side up, leaving 15-20cms of nice lighter pow on top of a supportive base to ski. I was getting rimed on one side while skinning up.



A look down at where I came from, about a quarter of the way up.



As I said about 35-40cms on top of the raincrust with ascending hardnesses to the crust. Handpits revealed stable snow all the way up.



There was some isolated minor cracking but this was only at the upper elevations where the wind had buffed the surface. The cracks weren't deep.



As I got higher up the wind effect became more apparent. Moderate winds from the S, SE and E.



The snowpit I dug at 1380m continued to confirm that the snow was stable. Total snowpack as of 11:40am today was 112cms and the next storm is already on its way in with an additional 35cms expected to fall.



And for those of you that aren't snow geeks like me...the turns were definitely sweet. Sorry about the flat light.



Only had time for one lap. I promised the snowplow guy that I'd move my car after I dug my pit. Let it snow!