Thanksgiving is all about tradition. For most folks around here, its excess Turkey and shopping. For us, it’s a condo in Blackcomb, 4 days skiing at Whistler-Blackcomb, and Sushi Village for Thanksgiving dinner. No turkey in sight.
7 of our 9 Thanksgivings in North America have been spent at Blackcomb. And the skiing has been fabulous every time. This year we were blessed with huge pre-season dumps, which continued all the way through the weekend. Opening day at Blackcomb was a powdery affair, followed by fabulous afternoon groomers on Whistler, which was as busy as a Herman Cain rally for appreciative female co-workers. Serious dumpage came down Thursday night, and early Friday morning we had several runs in deep Blackcomb mid-mountain fluff. Second tracks down Bark Sandwich made me very happy of myself!
More snow came down for another 5 inch powdery Saturday morning, By midday though unwelcome warm air, like hippies at hipster party, moved in and brought a sogginess to the proceedings. The first car of a fast Pineapple Express had rolled in, and for the next 24 hours the snow level oscillated around 1500-1800m. This made Sunday an interesting day. Sludgey snow first, rain low down, then serious fluffy deluges interleaved with flashes of sunshine. Highlight was first tracks down the Upper Dave Murray Downhill, starting at the Olympic course gate, leaving perfect carved lines through 3 inches of vanilla ice cream. There’s a tradition I could start.
4 days: 5500, 9500, 8500, 5400
Season Totals: 6 days, 40,100 vert, 3 powder days
Pacific Northwest Ski blog (and a few other places!) 
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