.jpg)
| New Snow | 1 cm | 7 Day Snow | 87 cm | Snowbase | 141 cm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine Temp | -8 °C | Valley Temp | 0 °C | Conditions | Soft Packed up top Hard Packed at the bottom |
After having the freezing levels rise Wednesday / Thursday, then dropping again to the valley last night, I was expecting the mountains to be frozen solid. Since the wet snow contains water, and the warm weather lets all the snow ‘melt’ a little – then when the temperatures drop, that water freezes. It makes for some nasty conditions. So the lower half of the mountain is pretty hard packed (where it had wetter snow), not icy, just really hard packed. If you ski on race or carving skis, then no problem as it is still easy to get an edge. Off-piste down low is a bit of a nightmare…
The top of the mountain, ie 7th Heaven and the Horstman glacier areas are in great shape. I was pleasantly surprised when I made it up there. The snow is soft and smooth like butter. Pretty much as nice as snow gets to rip around on – even the pockets of powder were light and dry. I skied all afternoon until they shut those lifts. Powder days always come first, but today ranks close to the best ‘non powder’ day you can get. Big smile on my face – although due to the high avalanche risk, a lot of the higher elevations are shut so we can’t get to ski all the good stuff.
Temperatures seemed pretty mild and the winds were low most of time – with the exception of the top 50m vertical in 7th Heaven, there was a strong wind blowing up the cat track at the top. Visibility was excellent up top, but there were a few layers of fog around mid-mountain.
So there are two distinctly different types of conditions right now – lower mountain is hard packed / groomer skiing only, still pretty good though. The top is fantastic soft snow – it feels like you are carving on an about an inch of butter. The off-piste is full of powder lumps, very soft and forgiving – I wish I had used my powder skis rather than the carving ones.
If anyone has a few spare minutes, and thinks my blog is worth reading – perhaps you would like to nominate me for the Lonely Planet blog awards. Here is a link to the nomination page. I guess the best category would be ‘Best Destination Blog’.
We hung around Whistler hoping Harmony might open today. Some great runs down to Emerald chair but the icy winds on the way up got the better of my 8 yr old! One of the best runs was the Dave Murray downhill and continued on the way to Creekside. “Hard packed” is a nice way of saying icy but it’s still not blue ice!! I think Blackcomb may have been the pick today especially as it seemed to bathed in sun in the pm -the grass is always greener…
Top blog! We’re following it daily. I hope you get some good votes in the Lonely Planet nominations – we’ve just nominated and it only takes a few seconds. Thanks again. Bring on the powder snow!!!! Only 7 days until we arrive.
Voted
)
Arriving on the 19th for a week from AUS (yes, JAFA), and I’ve built up some pretty high expectations for my g/f and young bloke.
Just hoping for fat flakes in the village, and all will be worth it in their eyes,
(But for me, freshies down Symphony or Harmony would be good too…)
Anyways, great blog, I’ve found your hands-on, just-been-up-there commentary to be infinitely more informative than intrawests’s official site.
Keep it coming!
Just Voted, totally agree with last comment. I see it is snowing again in the village just had a look at the webcam.
What kind of temperatures are expected up the mountain this coming week as I see one forecasting site is predicting freezing levels at 3500m+ for the foreseeable future?!
Like everyone else who has viewed this blog, I too think it’s great. I have been following it for a few weeks now. I’m due out with a mate for some boarding on 14th Jan for 2 weeks, I just hope the weather forecasters are going to be proven wrong and we get some snow! If anyone wants to hook up for some shredding and beers, give me a shout.
How long do you think it would take for the avalanche danger to go down enough for all of the mountain to open?
Thanks to everyone who has voted, lets hope I get a mention
Marcus, only the very bottom of the hills were close to ‘ice’ . I was finding it fairly easy to get an edge into the surface – the only problem there is that it is easier to do with a bit of speed…. In general, I think the Whistler lower mountains is better but since 7th Heaven and the Glacier chair is open on Blackcomb, that is the best place to ski right now.
Chris, 2200 meters is the peak of both mountains, so freezing levels above or around that means that any precipitation will be rain and not snow. Which is not what we want. However, if there is no precipitation, then there is no rain…. The warmer temps mean you don’t freeze on the chairs, but does lower the quality of the snow. So ideally we want around -3 to -5 for general skiing.
So, high freezing levels are not bad if there is no precipitation….. we will see what happens.
Sam, I have no idea about when (or if) the closed terrain will be opened. There is a nasty rumor going around that Peak chair may never open this season – which is possible but highly un-likely. From what I’ve heard, ski patrol is going to have hard time performing avalanche control for the rest of the season and expect to take longer (than normal in other seasons) each morning when doing so. They do expect to open some of the more challenging terrain one of these days, but safety comes first.
The snowpack is a weird one this year, and patrol is reporting all kind of abnormal behavior. They are having slides in areas that are normally considered solid, and are having trouble producing slides in areas that should be sliding…. They are finding ‘ski-cutting’, a method for manually starting slides and assessing stability by skiing across the top of a slope, to not be as reliable as usual.
In regard’s to Chris’ comment about the 3500m+ freezing level, if you are referring to snow-forecast’s website, I think that might be an error…-2 to -9 in the alpine, and the freezing level is 1300m above? That’s either an error or a really strange inversion.
One good thing about the forecasted lack of snow for the next few days is that at least ski patrol will be able to spend some time working the snowpack without having to worry about new snow layers…it sounds like they have enough to worry about anyway. Hopefully things settle down and it is safe enough to open some new terrain soon.
I just had a look at the snow-forecast site, and something is definitely wrong there.
The freezing level is going to rise, but their forecast seems a bit excessive, and its weird how there forecasted temperatures remain similar with a 2000m freezing level difference.
WB are now predicting a freezing level of 3000m for the next few days – would this mean that the peak would be above 0 degrees?
Ah…I see that they are forecasting a second above freezing layer…so basically a warm layer, then a colder sub-zero layer, then another warm layer in the higher alpine. So yeah, correct me if I’m wrong Greg, but it sounds like things will definitely be warming up in the alpine this week.
To tell the truth, I am not real sure. Generally the freezing level means the elevation at which the air temperature is Zero Celsius. So yes, the air temperatures on the mountain will be around or above zero. However, you can’t just take into account air temp when deciding how ‘warm’ or ‘cold’ it is. Factors such as wind speed, humidity, air pressure and I am sure plenty more affect the overall conditions.
It is possible for it snow when the air temp is +2-3 and it can be freezing rain rather than snow at temps below zero.
I guess the short answer is – yes it will be warm – but that doesn’t mean the skiing will be bad