The snow has continued to fall the last couple of days, and the mountains are both now fully open. Yet again we've been in the right place at the right time, getting more first tracks through some great powder.
On the evening of Sunday 16th Ingrid came to stay, to cook us a long-promised Smorgasbord from her native Sweden. Andy and I helped prepare a huge range of dishes, all of which had to be served in the correct order, with Swedish drinking songs and vodka shots at the appropriate points. I was a bit concerned about the number of dishes with fish in but they were all delicious, even the one based on the slightly dubious-sounding pickled herring.
I went up Blackcomb on Monday 17th, hoping to meet up with Stan. He wasn't up the mountain when I got to the top of Excelerator, so I was left to plan my own route. 7th Heaven had been open the previous day, so the only major area of powder yet to be opened since the storms was Blackcomb Glacier, a massive valley with no lifts or ski-patrol in it, which can normally be accessed by hiking for 10 minutes or so from the top of the Showcase T-Bar.
The lightboard at the top of Excelerator showed that the bowl was yet to open and that neither the Showcase nor Horstman T-Bars were running. I spoke to a ski-patroller who told me that they were hoping to open the bowl by lunchtime, but he didn't give much away. Unable to get anywhere useful from the Glacier Express chairlift, I decided to take Jersey Cream and follow the 7th Avenue cat-track over to 7th Heaven, hoping I might find some fresh snow in the trees.
When I got to the top of the 7th Heaven lift I noticed Horstman was running and looked over to the Horstman Glacier to see whether Showcase was open. What I saw was another sign of how desperate people here are for virgin snow: Showcase was not running, but there was a line of people hiking up the T-Bar track to get to the Blackcomb Glacier bowl.
I assumed that the Blackcomb Glacier must be opening shortly and that the hikers were hoping to be at the front of the queue when it opened. From the top of 7th Heaven I traversed across the Horstman Glacier, arrived half-way up the Showcase T-Bar and decided to join those hiking up the lift. I took a few photos, attached my board to my backpack and set off.
At the top of the T-Bar I came to the hut normally used to control the lift and discovered why it was closed. The hut was almost completely buried and was being dug out by four ski-patrollers. I hiked on past the hut and up towards the gate into Blackcomb Glacier bowl, discovering that it had completely changed shape: the usual wide path had been obscured by a massive snow drift. The wind had cleared a funnel of snow between the drift and the rock face and it was up this narrow path that people were climbing.
I followed the line of people up the funnel and out onto the windlip. There was a channel about a foot wide in the soft snow where other people had walked, and I followed this out into the middle of the bowl and then on towards the far side, hoping to find the least tracked snow. I paused for a couple of minutes to recover, attach my board and assess the situation.
I could see people hiking up towards Lakeside Bowl and out along the far ridge of the main bowl. I wondered about taking one of these routes myself but looking down into the bowl it looked as though the hiking was unnecessary as the snow below me was almost untouched.
The run down the face underneath the windlip was nice, although the snow was a little harder than the perfect powder I'd been hoping for. Turning round the corner to the left, I traversed right into a more sheltered part of the bowl and found the perfect snow. As I whooped and shot down into the bowl I noticed two ski-patrollers watching me from below and wondered if I'd done something bad, but as passed them they just grinned so I carried on down to Excelerator.
By the time I reached the top of Glacier Express, Showcase had opened so I managed to avoid repeating the earlier hike. Unfortunately the number of people dropping over into the bowl had shot up since the T-Bar started running, so I decided to have a quick run back down the T-Bar rather than getting caught up in the crowd.
The snow to skier's left was as good as anywhere in the Glacier bowl, as most people had not bothered traversing away from the T-Bar on the right. I did two runs down there, then hiked up the funnel to the Glacier bowl gate again. As I walked out along the windlip I looked down at the people in the bowl and decided that it might be worth hiking up the far side of the bowl and along the opposite ridge.
As I prepared to drop off the windlip Stan radioed me to say he was at the bottom of the Glacier bowl, waiting at the start of the cat-track. I ditched the plan to hike out and repeated my earlier route through the bowl, down to meet Stan.
We caught Glacier Express up again, then took the Horstman T-Bar with the intention of checking out 7th Heaven. We stopped at the Horstman Hut for a quick bite to eat and while we were there began wondering about Secret Bowl. By the time we left the hut we'd concluded that 7th wouldn't be very exciting, so we traversed past the Couloir gate and along to the Secret Bowl entrance. The bowl was in great condition and the run out of the bowl was better than we'd ever seen before. At the base of the cliff we traversed right and dropped down The Bite back to the chairs.
Since it was St. Patrick's Day we were under strict instructions to get down to the Dubh Linn Gate early, so we finished the day with a final trip up Glacier Express and down Ridge Runner and Rock'n'Roll. I said goodbye to Stan, downloaded the gondola and joined the others in the pub, where we began our assault on the village's Guinness supply.
Tuesday 18th began surprisingly early for some of us, considering the previous night's efforts. Jim and I took the 08:00 bus, leaving most of the others to follow on a later bus. We met up with Matt at the lifts and went up the Whistler Village Gondola then noticing Harmony was open, we descended through the trees and took the lift up to the Little Whistler summit.
The signs at the bottom of the lift had warned of dire conditions at the top and they were not exaggerating. There was a complete white-out accompanied by a howling gale. I wondered about heading down Harmony Piste and hoping the conditions were OK lower down but by the time we reached the turn-off for Pika's none of us were very keen on going back to the top, so we went back down to the Roundhouse and spent a few runs on Emerald Express, leaping over the rollers on Green Acres.
Matt and I were feeling the effects of all the Guinness and were glad to stop for break at the Roundhouse. Mike, Stan and Bob joined us there and we all took off down Whiskey Jack, past Chic Pea then cut off through the trees to the left down to Big Red. From there we went over to Harmony again and found the conditions had improved slightly since our earlier visit.
We did one run down under the Harmony chair, finding some very soft powder and investigating some large drop-offs. We didn't actually end up going back to the drop-offs as our next run was down Harmony Ridge, through the usual powder fields to the right of the piste then back down to the chair. From the top of the chair we took the ridge down to the top of the T-Bars, then Mike and I dropped into T-Bar Bowl to skier's left of the piste. I've always been amazed how long the snow lasts there and it didn't disappoint on this occasion - the snow was soft, with hardly any tracks. We yelled out as we saw the conditions below us then raced down to Peak chair, leaving some huge sweeping turns in the snow.
The top of Peak didn't seem quite as bad as Harmony had done, though the visibility was still very poor. We followed Frontier Pass around the back of the summit in white-out conditions then peeled off to the right along the little path leading to the high West Bowl entrance. The route in was not looking quite as healthy as when Stan and I had been there on Sunday but it wasn't too difficult to get round the rocks.
Once in the bowl we found the visibility improving and traversed across to the far side. Below us we were amazed to see the entire right side of the bowl was untracked. Mike couldn't contain himself and leapt down, leaving the rest of us to find new lines without crossing his tracks.
The snow was great and we all emerged onto Highway 86 with huge grins and self-congratulatory yells. We got back to the chair and while half the group decided to have some lunch, Mike, Stan and I began calculating how many times we could fit the route in before Peak closed.
The answer turned out to be four, as each lap took about 26 minutes. The third lap was the most enjoyable, as the sun came out just as we dropped into the bowl, clearly showing the best snow. All four laps were amazing, all the more so as the snow was completely unexpected. Mike and I skirted through the trees at the lower right point of the bowl, finding fresh snow all the way down the to the Highway.
After four fantastic trips through the bowl I was shattered, so rode down to Olympic Station and downloaded.
I spent the evening at Stan's house, looking after Josh while Stan and Kinga had their first night out together since his birth.
Stan and I met up again at the lift at about 08:50 on Wednesday 19th. We went up Whistler again, as Josh, Kinga and a babysitter were due to join us at the Roundhouse later on. We took up where we'd left off the previous day, with a trip up the Peak Express chair. On the way up we wondered about trying an alternative route and decided to give Christmas Trees a go - I hadn't done it since last season and Stan had never tried it.
We dropped off the wind-blown summit into Whistler Bowl and stayed on skier's left, ready to traverse through the first available gap in the rocks. The traverse was harder than usual, as the visibility was very poor. We crossed several very steep gullies including the West Cirque and eventually made it to the saddle high above the West Bowl, in the opposite corner to our favourite Cockalorum entrance.
When I'd done the Christmas Trees in the past I'd always descended straight in or aimed slightly right, but I had a feeling that the best route was actually to traverse as far right as possible, so that was what we did. We found a few tracks leading right without losing too much height and followed them all the way along the ridge. At the end we found a wide-open space with some nice powder and swept down through that, but stopped when we found ourselves at the top of a large cliff. At the time we thought it was just a steep slope, so casually hiked up a bit to find an alternative route, but when we finally got down below and looked up and were very glad we hadn't tried descending it!
After a quick break at the Roundhouse for Stan to buy some emergency wax we took another ride up Peak, opting for our usual drop-in to the West Bowl rather than the more precarious route we'd taken earlier. Having said that, the usual route was becoming a bit sketchy: a huge cornice was blocking the gully we'd been using up until the recent storms and rocks were beginning to show through on the path we'd been taking since the storms.
We managed to avoid the rocks, got a couple of turns down the gully, then traversed across the bowl and cut down. The snow wasn't quite as nice as the previous day but was still pretty good. We flew down and rejoined Highway 86, then caught Big Red up and set off towards Harmony.
Stan was keen to show Kinga an Alpine lift when she arrived at lunchtime, and Harmony seemed to make more sense than Peak. We headed over there to check out the conditions, but unfortunately they were rather unpleasant - it was windy and foggy again and the signs were out warning that it was for experts only. We did a run down the ridge, with Stan dropping off right then through the trees while I took Kaleidescope down into Boomer Bowl.
The conditions hadn't improved when we got back to the top a second time, so we abandoned Harmony, took Pika's Traverse back to the Roundhouse and grabbed a quick lunch while we waited for Kinga. Kinga arrived while I was still eating, so her and Stan set off to make the most of her 2 hours on the mountain.
When I'd finished lunch I set off to investigate Franz's Meadow, a gladed area under Shale Slope leading down to Franz's Chair. The plan was to assess it's suitability as an introduction to powder for Kinga. I met up with Stan and Kinga back at the top of Big Red and we decided to give Franz's Meadow a go.
The three of us found some reasonable snow on the lower slopes of the meadow, then headed down past Big Red and on down Expressway. Stan and I were amazed how well Kinga kept up - we hardly had to wait at all.
We took Garbanzo up then had a final run down Tokum. Every now and again we found a jump at the side of the piste which Stan and I would leap off. We were surprised to look back on several occasions and see Kinga approaching the jump just behind us! She was fearlessly following us down, complaining when she caught up that her board wasn't fast enough...
We carried on down to through the slush to the village, collected Josh and adjourned to the Dubh Linn Gate for a pint and some nachos. | 
