February – finally winter arrives

It took the lingering effects of #fuckingelnino a month or so to dissipate. But when they did – kaboom! Normal services were resumed in Pacific Northwest winter climate. It felt like mid-December rather than February, but we weren’t complaining.

It was a violent pulse of weather too, like the storms had been building up against a stubborn wall, which finally fractured and let the pent up energy through. We had serious snow in Seattle, Eastern WA was hit hugely, and serious weather abounded. We watched 100mph winds close (and apparently derail) lifts at Schweitzer one February Saturday. Mission did pretty well keeping their chairs running when we were there, despite some wild weather closing the hill early on a couple of occasions.

This all, of course, did wonderful things for the base and snow quality. We had great skiing every weekend, and while no deep pow, lots of nice 4-6 inch topups. The best day was Friday at Schweitzer. No people. Cold but not brutal. And a solid 6 inches of super light pow everywhere.  It was one of those days where every run was great.

Here’s some sunny footage from the Sunday after the wind storm.

Next stop – Austria. The annual Lech trip 🙂

Mission Ridge: 7000m, 8300m

Schweitzer: 10,300m, 9000m

Mission Ridge:  8200m, 8400m

Season Totals: 26 days, 195,800m vert. 6 powder days

Fog-and-Shrubbery-a-thon at Schweitzer, December 2013

It’s not been a stellar start to the season in the Pacific Northwest. Low-ish snow in the Cascades made us look further afield, where we discovered a 2/3rds open Schweitzer, tucked up in the Idaho Panhandle. And if you know Schweitzer, 2/3rds of that hill to ride is like 2/3rds of a Jeroboam of Penfold’s Grange to drink. Plenty for a weekend.

Saturday won the award for the foggiest day. Serious white-outs, which on steeps were as effective as Zaphod Beeblebrox’s peril sensitive sunglasses, Shrubbery was abundant on some runs too, providing excellent early season quick turn practice conditions 😉

There was some hellagood skiing to be had though. Groomers like Zip Down and Pend D’Oreille were like carving gelato, occasionally with a spruce tipped flavor. The steeps plunging off the ridge into north bowl – Australia, Shoot the Moon, Debbie Sue – had excellent coverage and the benefit of trees to provide definition in the fog. And despite the lack of visibility, K-Mac in the Lakeside Bowl was a fabulous plunge where your trust in the skills of the winchcat groomer guy had to be absolute.

It wasn’t a particularly photogenic weekend, but the video below gives a flavor of the fun we had.

Saturday 9300m, Sunday 8400m

Season Totals: 8 days, 65,400m vert

 

 

Powderlicious Northwest Skiing – January and February 2012

It took a year to produce – ok – 2 nights and a year of procrastination, but here’s some clips from last year from various weekends away. It was a fine season. Mountains are Silver Mt, Revelstoke, Big White, Mt Bachelor, Schweitzer.

Schweitzer snow, sun and vert-a-thon

Wind is such an influential sculptor of ski mountains. This can be especially true at Schweitzer where the wind, we like to call her Bree (Olson), whips snow off the back of the mountain to load the bowls, and drives storms into pockets of the mountain where deep stashes quickly build.

This is exactly what happened on Monday when we arrived. Constant snow during the day deposited a reported 3 inches. But around Stiles and Headwall, double this amount piled up due to Bree blasting snow into that corner of the mountain. This made for an afternoon of powder riding on a mostly deserted ski hill.

The snow continued into the early evening, ensuring the powdery fun persisted well into Tuesday. And then the temperatures slowly warmed to respectable levels (ie in the 20’s), and the sun came out. Bree kept blowing lightly, aiming her efforts at North Bowl, where the conditions remained primo all week. If you can’t get freshies, these conditions are an excellent second best. So we kept skiing, from open to close, with fast lift, no lines, great on and off groomed snow, and incredible weather. Beers at the end of the day were certainly well earned.

10,600m, 13,400m, 14,700m, 12,400m vert

Season Totals: 37 days, 18 powder days, 348,100m vert

Magnificent Xmas at Schweitzer

And it just keeps snowing.

By Xmas day, Schweitzer had seen 180 inches of snow this season. It averages 300 inches a year – the conditions are truly incredible. In 4 days, we saw 25 of these inches fall, in the process creating some magnificent conditions. Saturday and Sunday were the equivalent of every recent Dr Who episode, basically good solid 4-6 inch powder days. As the temperatures dropped Sunday afternoon, the snowfall increased, the sun made a fleeting appearance, and Monday and Tuesday were epic.

Schweitzer is rarely busy, but Xmas Eve and Day seemed to have as many riders as vegans at McDonalds. This left more pow for us, creating time to leisurely explore new terrain. It’s wasn’t like the freshies were going away.

My Monday afternoon quest was to ski all the double-black diamonds in North Bowl that dropped off the ridge on the way to the T-Bar. I knew Pucci’s Chute was steep and Siberia was a broad and open mini-bowl, but for some reason Kohli’s Big Timber and Wayne’s Woods were new territory to me. In deep, light, barely tracked snow, all were spectacular, but Kohli’s became my new favorite Schweitzer run. Relentlessly steep lines threaded through massive, evenly spaced trees, creating limitless options for creativity and pow mining. Amazing skiing, and it absolutely needed to be sampled several more times over the next day.

Schweitzer’s 2900 acres of reported terrain are solidly mid-range in the line-up of North American ski hills. But every time we go, we find new lines, new stashes, new options, all making this a mountain that skis much bigger than the statistics reports. There are lies, damn lies and statistics after all.  Schweitzer truly is the Pacific Northwest gem that hardly anyone has skied.

4 days: 7800, 10500, 11000, 11600m vert

Season Totals: 16 days, 11 powder days, 142,300m vert

Mid-December at Schweitzer

I’m always reluctant to call a powder day in the afternoon. But at 3pm we headed up the Lakeview triple, hooked hard left and picked lines next to the two steep winchcat groomed runs that plummet off the ridge line. Steady snow since mid morning, supplemented by a moderate wind depositing snow from Washington State into Schweitzer‘s South Bowl, had filled in tracks and added at least 4  inches of superb windblown pow. Like Mitt Romney since the election, no sign of the  morning’s variable crunchy snow was left. Just light blower billowing into our chests on every turn. It had to be a powder day.

The next day there was no doubt about a powder day. Depending on the aspect of the slopes, there was 4-6 inches of fluff to carve. And midweek, the competition for fresh lines was as intense as Arizona’s defensive line. The opening of the Great Escape chair for the season gave us the whole front side to play on, meaning innumerable lines and untracked options all day long. Some of the tree skiing was phenomenal, and unusually for Schweitzer, the runs served from the Sunnyside chair had some of the best snow on the mountain. And least tracked to, making for fine late afternoon options.

We were one day early for the Outback Bowl opening, but the constant bombing during the day gave away those intentions. I really wish I’d been feeling sick the next day …

 

Tuesday 8000m, Wednesday 10,300m

Season Totals: 10 days, 5 powder days, 83,700m vert

More 2011-12 Ski Season Videos

This time covering Thanksgiving to New Year 2011. We started in a very snowy  Whistler, cruised through a sunny December in the Cascades, and finished in the very snowy climes of interior British Columbia between Xmas and New Year.

Easter Weekend (and closing) at Schweitzer

Closing with a base of over 200 inches in early April? It’s a little crazy really. But that’s how it is at Schweitzer this year. Amazing conditions have prevailed all season, and the base has just kept growing. We even had several more inches on Saturday, during a day on which the weather fluctuated as wildly as emotions on The View. We skied steep, soft groomers, chutes filled with wind-blown fresh, bumpy, creamy tree lines and even some corn-like slush on the sunny Sunday afternoon.

No lift lines and fabulous conditions meant big vert each day. Luckily we discovered fantastic energy replenishment at La Rosa Club each evening. We needed it.

This has been one of Schweitzer’s best ever seasons. Our paltry 7 days up there is a little shameful, but that’s how the proverbial crumbles sometimes.They were 7 good ‘uns though. Two of them especially. Until next winter …

2 days: 12,300m, 10000m vert

Season Totals: 55 days, 454,000m vert, 27 powder days

Epic Schweitzer Powder Weekend

4 winters ago, we skied Schweitzer for an end of January weekend. Saturday was good, and Sunday was one of the best ski days of our lives. Deep, fluffy snow and light crowds – captured forever on YouTube. I didn’t think we’d ever beat that one at Schweitzer. I was wrong though. Here’s some photographic evidence …

It started snowing in Sandpoint about 9pm Friday night and finally stopped on the mountain, after depositing 35 inches, early Sunday afternoon. Saturday was vaguely busy in the morning, and the snow a little heavier than true powdery perfection. Avie control was the order of the morning, so while the hucksters lined up at the triple chair waiting for the bowl to open, we headed to Sunnyside where the wind had loaded the slopes with knee-deep blower. Three superb, ski movie-style runs, slicing through trees with snow flowing over our heads was the reward. As the mountain gradually opened up, we explored like Peter Griffin searching for an attention span, until our legs couldn’t take any more. Even the groomers had 6 inches of fresh – not a line of corduroy and it’s associated stress relief was sighted all weekend.

Sunday was a Saturday repeat, except the weather was colder, the snow lighter and deeper, and the crowds at Church. Hopefully the picture of the perfect powder day is emerging. Runs down Australia, Whiplash and Shoot the Moon into Outback Bowl were bottomless, almost dangerously deep in the tight trees that line the edges of these runs. There were more faceshots than a Bree Olson movie, lasting all day long. It was really quite a day – the best of the season, and probably one of my best ever.

9200m, 8900m vert

Season Totals: 40 days, 321,300m vert, 18 powder days

New Year at Schweitzer

New Years Day is always a great day to ski. It’s not always the easiest as we inevitably shake off the slight fogginess from the previous evening’s celebrations. Still, we were on the hill at 9.45am in calm, cold, partly cloudy conditions. Schweitzer was even more quiet than usual, as I suspect most people had more fogginess to shake off than us.

The day turned into a groomer-fest, as the -10C weather kept the more adventurous terrain somewhat firm on all but the north-facing runs. 10,ooom vertical by 3.20pm on Schweitzer’s steep, winch-cat groomed runs was as much frenetic fun as we could take after the night before, and we headed back to Sandpoint to catch up on some sleep before dinner.

Monday was a bluebird dream of a day. Groomers were perfect. Off-groomed softened in the sun and the addition of wind-blown pow created a smorgasbord of options, upon which we feasted like Miss Piggy in a Vegas buffet. The sun eventually tempted the locals up the mountain, but when 90 second lift lines seem long, you know you’re spoiled.

By mid-afternoon, our thoughts were turning back to the reality of driving home and work the next day. Even the sun seemed aware of our musing, and gave us a gentle push as it dropped behind the low clouds to the west for the final time around 2pm. That was enough, we decreed, and brought another fast, varied, superb Schweitzer ski weekend to an end. This place is really hard to beat sometimes.

Sunday 10,000m, Monday 8900m vertical

Season Totals: 21 days,  162,500m vert, 9 powder days