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Whistler powder
By ruth | January 10, 2008
There is So Much Snow here at the moment and more to come! It’s good and bad news though - the storms have also brought high winds, so the avalanche risk is through the roof; and the closed in weather has meant some challenging riding conditions.
On Saturday Dave and I used our Fresh Tracks tickets to get up the mountain early, have breakfast at the Roundhouse, and get in a couple of runs before the hoi polloi came and tracked everything out. We did two runs looping Emerald chair even before the piste bashers had been down them. I never expected to get knee deep powder on the green runs. I was also shocked at how unfit I was - it was my 8th day riding this season but the first time I’d been literally gasping for breath by the end of a run. I’d forgotten how different riding powder is, and how physical.
The winds were so high that even Emerald chair felt exposed, and very cold. Avalanche control were blasting all morning and there was no chance they would open the higher lifts that day. We hiked (short hikes only) for the powder we’d found before Christmas and got fresh tracks three or four times. The snow was so deep that even though I’d swapped to my longer board I wished I had a few more centimetres, and playing in the trees required commitment because if you slowed down too much you sank or stopped. I made a late decision not to go for a gap between two trees and ended up ramming one of them; I definitely came off worse than the tree. I buried my nose and twisted my back ankle; the shooting pains had me worried for a while but they subsided and I knew I hadn’t done anything serious.
It was an amazing day, and even though the weather was not pleasant, everything easily accessible was tracked out by lunchtime. By then I was exhausted anyway (and had a sinus headache that was getting worse) so we called it, although first Dave took the opportunity to demo a board from the Showcase demo tent.
My ankle stiffened and swelled up that night, but an ice pack and ibuprofen seemed to more or less fix it. If it hadn’t been for the headache I would have thought about riding on it, but I felt like death warmed up so noble Dave gave up a powder day and took me home. To our great disgust, they opened Harmony chair for the first time in several days of snowfall - it will have been EPIC and we missed it. But it’s still early in the season and we have many powder days ahead of us, with any luck! 
Tags: snowboarding, whistler, powder
Topics: /snow |