Yesterday I got my free 70+ lift ticket at Canaan Valley, expecting to use it just once to eliminate 850 feet of skiinning in order to access the high backcountry. The snow on Sunday had been light but the way the wind was blowing I had dreams of deep powder drift lines. What was that peculiar noise as I began the luge run to access the goods? Ripping crust? Nah! Dreams die hard, especially for optimistic fools. Skinning up Weiss Knob, and on the subsequent run down, skis broke the crust into dinner plate size pieces at times. I finally smartened up and bailed about halfway up, survival skied down with my tail between my legs, and returned to CV the way I came. Skiing down with legs burning from the battles just fought, someone called from the lift. It was Redman from DCSki. We met and his unbridled enthusiasm revived me for some very enjoyable runs. It was a day to be grateful for groomers. They saved my day today.
As for the backcountry, it needs the temperature to drop and STAY THERE for one big snow or a series of small ones. Niar is in the forecast for this weekend. Apologies for using a 4 letter word, but at least I spelled it backwards. I hate up and down winters.
in the late PM I did go over to Whitegrass to hang out for a while. It was great company as always. The WG trails are doing fine and a lot of people for a Monday were using them. There were more cars in the WG lot than at CV.
just goes to show, there are no bad days on slope with right attitude!
Bumps wrote:
just goes to show, there are no bad days on slope with right attitude!
That, and the Valley provides lots of different options for moving on snow. Bring all your boards, and you'll get to use many of them. Any day spent with the Redman has to be fun.
Thanks for sharing! So it is not so much a question of enough snow, but a problem with the crust? What skis were you on? Lots of bottom scraping?
A complex snowpack but no bottom scraping. 6-10" of soft heavy snow, crust on top, and as of yesterday 1-2" of fluff over the crust. If it doesn't rain too much or stay warm too long, the base ought to be in for the season, but short of spring conditions, I.e. Death throes, it is not going to be good skiing without more snow and cold.
BC 125 skis w a 90mm waist, normally plenty of ski for WV backcountry. Old T3, 2 buckle boots and switchback bindings.
I gave it a run as well the last few days about and hour 1/2 south of the valley and a couple hundered ft higher up. The frozen rain crust was barely noticable where I was and actually helped me from sinking as far down to the deadfall as I was on the previous day before this clip was filmed. .Out of curiosity (besides the crazy deadfall everywhere) How would you compare what the valleys surface conditions were like when you were there to whats in this clip from Sunday ?
http://vimeo.com/81948587
Thanks Brook
camp wrote:
......Any day spent with the Redman has to be fun.
Hehehe, got to spend sometime with Red on Friday evening. Always, very entertaining. Unfortunately, Redman got lost in the transition to DCski's new website. Maybe Scott can help find him.
Its been puking all morning and it looks like tomorrow might be the best day in the Valley so far this season. Unfortuately, it doesn't look like I'll make it up there until Thursday.
Blasphempy! Chip has been skiing bc for 2 months now.
Oh wait, never mind.
Heading up tonite for post storm leftovers wed&thurs at Zippitydodawline.
Out of curiosity (besides the crazy deadfall everywhere) How would you compare what the valleys surface conditions were like when you were there to whats in this clip from Sunday ?
http://vimeo.com/81948587
no comparison, that looks very nice. Your skis were moving a lot of loose snow around. That's what I was hoping for.
Oops, that looks like a board.
Yep its a board + thanks again . Hoping to get back up to the valley come early Jan .
