Took Kevin down to Vancouver airport on monday morning and swapped him for these two...
Gary and John are here until jan 26th, so plenty of time for their legs to remember how to ski and their throats how to sing apres. They are staying about 300m from us so easy to meet up either on the mountain or in the village
After snowing all day sunday I was a bit concerned about the drive to the airport, but when we hit the road at 6:00am the main roads and Kevin's B&B steep side road had already been ploughed, and the combination of 4x4 and all weather tyres coped with the remaining inch or so of compact snow very well. This type of trip was the main reason we chose to buy the suzuki so its finally paying off, and having done it once I'm not going to be worried over future drives down the highway.
Unfortunately sunday and monday morning's snow turned to heavy rain for the rest of monday all the way up the mountain, so the net result is that the mountain is no better off snow-wise than it was last week. Most locals feel that its not been a very good start to the season so far, but I guess that is the luck of the draw and global warming/freak weather for you. I've now done 25 days on the snow, so a quarter of the way to my goal for the season. A few days have been spectacular, others have been decidedly mediocre, but often you don't know how it will really pan out until you get up the hill. Today was a case in point - forecast cloudy with sunny periods, the village has been clouded in all day but the upper mountain was blue skies and sunshine and absolutely glorious. Almost all of the mountain is open now - all the lifts are running and just a few of the lower runs are still closed due to insufficient coverage. The lift queues were pretty bad on weekends over the holiday period, but now things have calmed down and most lifts have been no or minimal queues for the past couple of days as the remaining skiers are spread over the whole mountain.
Gary and John are here until jan 26th, so plenty of time for their legs to remember how to ski and their throats how to sing apres. They are staying about 300m from us so easy to meet up either on the mountain or in the village
After snowing all day sunday I was a bit concerned about the drive to the airport, but when we hit the road at 6:00am the main roads and Kevin's B&B steep side road had already been ploughed, and the combination of 4x4 and all weather tyres coped with the remaining inch or so of compact snow very well. This type of trip was the main reason we chose to buy the suzuki so its finally paying off, and having done it once I'm not going to be worried over future drives down the highway.
Unfortunately sunday and monday morning's snow turned to heavy rain for the rest of monday all the way up the mountain, so the net result is that the mountain is no better off snow-wise than it was last week. Most locals feel that its not been a very good start to the season so far, but I guess that is the luck of the draw and global warming/freak weather for you. I've now done 25 days on the snow, so a quarter of the way to my goal for the season. A few days have been spectacular, others have been decidedly mediocre, but often you don't know how it will really pan out until you get up the hill. Today was a case in point - forecast cloudy with sunny periods, the village has been clouded in all day but the upper mountain was blue skies and sunshine and absolutely glorious. Almost all of the mountain is open now - all the lifts are running and just a few of the lower runs are still closed due to insufficient coverage. The lift queues were pretty bad on weekends over the holiday period, but now things have calmed down and most lifts have been no or minimal queues for the past couple of days as the remaining skiers are spread over the whole mountain.
Two for one, I sound like part of a supermarket offer!
ReplyDeleteHope the snow is falling in the right places.