Unexpected bonus

There was nothing on last night's weather forecast about snow overnight, so I had planned a slow start this morning. Fortunately my wife Marie looked out the window about 7.15 am and uttered my favourite words - "it looks like a powder day."

It obviously took a lot of people by surprise because there were only 20 people in the gondola line when I arrived around 8.20 am.

A quick run down Rudi's and Blizzard and then up on the BC chair. I couldn't believe it when none of the dozen or so people in front of me on the chair took BC Liftline, leaving me with first tracks.

Then it was up the Storm Peak Express and across to Shadows which I've been dreaming about skiing again all summer long. Along with Closet it was a little wind blown but still soft and deep around those beautiful aspens and largely unskied.

Triangle 3, Cyclone and Bar-UE Liftline were also good, but the deepest untracked snow I found was on the skier's right of Sunset. I also found some deep soft snow in the trees to the skier's left of upper Twister, and Hurricane was pretty good too.

Despite all the snow this week, there's still a few hazards out there because the powder hasn't really had time to pack down, especially around Bar-UE Liftline where I spent some time digging for my ski which detached after I got a little too close to one shrub and Typhoon where I did a really cool (but totally unplanned) rail slide along a fallen tree trunk.

Here's the map of today's runs for a total of 17,060 vertical ft and a season total of 55,138 vertical ft (or 5.5% of my season goal of skiing one million vertical ft).