Photos at last...

A little late but as promised I have put together some photos from around the hill.

For the last week we have been stuck in a strange weather pattern. Traditionally, January is the month of low temperatures and high snow fall but for the past week we have had quite the opposite. A warm front has caused a cold air inversion meaning the alpine regions have experienced mild temperatures above zero while the valley has been below zero.

The other result being that the village is currently above the clouds meaning we are enjoying bright blue skies while the valley is deep in cloud below us. On the two days I took these photos the airport below us was closed due to low cloud and fog!!! From the slopes the cloud below looks like a sheet of perfectly still water - similar to the view out of an aircraft window. Despite the ordinary photos my camera takes if you look closely you can see the clouds below.

The warm temps have also caused a small amount of melt here on the hill so the trees are again green and free of snow. Hopefully it will return to normal by the end of this week.

Riding up the hill on the Snow Ghost Express - a six pack chair just - this is the first chair I ride every day.

The view from the top of the Snow Ghost Express

View from the top of the Snow Ghost Express - looking across the ski hill towards the Black Forest

View from the top of the Alpine T-Bar looking towards Gem Lake

The control box at the top of the Alpine T-Bar - looking back across the Okanagan Valley

Ski Patrol Hut at the top of the Cliff

View from the top of the Cliff - looking towards the Easter Chutes (which run down the right hand side of the ridge line mid-picture) and towards the Black Forest a little further to the right

The view at the top of the Cliff. The patch of trees with the cleared line in the middle is the Cliff Chair which returns you to the top. I could not safely stand any closer to the edge and take a picture to show you the slope.

Just another helpful sign...if you do find any explosives please give them to another Big White employee, I am not interested.

Looking over the Cliff to the East Peak. Technically out of bounds but you can hike to the top of this peak and ride to the bottom of the Cliff Chair so it is a popular side-country hike.

Hopefully if the weather sorts itself out and the base settles this sign will be turned over.

The Cliff in profile

I'm running on the same clock as Fairlie's cards...

Well...since we last spoke not a lot has happened but since Christmas quite a lot has changed.

The two minute version of Christmas and New Year is simple.

Christmas dinner went off without a hitch, we enjoyed a full turkey and ham and all the trimmings. We exchanged gifts in a token secret Santa that saw three people give the same or substantially the same gift (it's a small hill with only four shops) and we ate drank and behaved badly.

New Years Eve was a big party night with fireworks in the village centre at 8pm for the kids and again at midnight for the bigger kids. The pub kindly charged a cover for entry and jacked the price of drinks causing everyone who actually lives on the hill to party at each others houses while the tourists poured out their wallets. I worked on the night of NYE and whilst a little disappointed to be missing out at 11pm on 31/12 I was more than happy with my choice at 8am on 01/01 as people came to work looking like hell and I walked out the door fresh as a button with 10 cents on the ground. The hill was empty and I was the first man down two runs.

It snowed consistently throughout late December, the mountain enjoyed two weeks at full capacity over the Christmas/New Year period and the second half of the mountain (Gem Lake) was opened up. For the first time we endured lift lines which at their worst caused a five minute delay and occasionally caused me to go home early. I don't do queues.

Everything seemed perfect and from all the evidence contained in the myriad of press releases this place puts out everyday it was. But then a few cracks began to show in the armour and the mountain has endured a very testing first two weeks in January.

Unfortunately our little hill, as protected as it is from so many of the world's problems, has suffered at hands of the world's economy. We are a little down on occupancy. Numbers of day and weekend trippers are also down and those who are here are in general just spending a little less. The effect has rolled through the village. It started with a number of house keepers and condo inspectors (no idea what the latter do...) being laid off (obviously not vitally important to the lifts turning). Then they cancelled the fireworks every Thursday and Saturday night, binned the family fun races and canned the family movie night. Our perfect winter wonderland had a few scratches in the duco.

The feeling around the hill has been lack lustre to say the least.

Then just when we thought it could not possible get ANY worse...the sun has come out, the temperature is up and the base is melting.

It is not the end of the world...but the alpine forecast is for temperatures above zero for the rest of the week and obviously no snow. The same thing happened last January when the mountain had 10 days of unseasonal high temps. What happened last year after the hot spell was two weeks of intense snow and a huge jump in the base for a Stella February and a solid second half of the year. We are hoping history repeats.

A little more concerning is the affect the odd temperatures have on the snow base. Apart from the obvious - when it snows it grows and when its hot it melts - the base has a personality of its own. The heavy pre-season falls, followed by a warm spell, a rain event in early December, heavy falls in late December and now the melt means the base has a number of layers to it each with their own characteristics. The end result is an unstable base where the layers are more inclined to slide on each other.

We are not alone in this, across British Columbia there have been 13 deaths from avalanches this winter. Twelve of these occurred in one 16 day period. It's been mayhem on the hill as a result. The Cliff is being heavily monitored as it was the site of a fatal avalanche on January 6 2008 and everyone is urging that only the most experienced riders and skiers venture out of bounds or into the back country.

To be honest it is not really affecting me and here is my rationale....

My job is reasonably recession proof. Four nights out of five I work the graveyard shift. I'm the only man working at a desk that operates 24/7 and everyone is scared of the hours. The mountain offers shuttles up and down the hill 24 hours a day (with bookings till the season ends) and someone has to be here to greet a weary Australian lawyer at 4am after 30 hours on a plane - sure he is fine but his wife who has sat at the back of the plane with three kids for 30 hours is just a little shirty. Then when the world wakes and the real people come to work to deal with the guests I walk out the door, strap in and ride. Sure there is a little less snow than usual but there are also less people riding it and I get out there everyday. As far as I am concerned the less people the better.

So for me it is a simple case of out of sight...out of mind. All I need to do is complete my list of nightly tasks, add a little extra for good measure, kick back and wait for the sun to rise. And with no clouds in the sky and no one around I am amassing a great number of photos of me on the mountain with no other tracks in the snow and not another living thing in sight.

And as for the Cliff...I've already ridden it so I have ticked that box...I'll throw together a few photos when I get home.

I know...

...it's not christmas anymore it is 2009...but despite my best intentions everyone keeps calling me in the middle of the night and finding time to blog is hard...

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all from Pablo!!!

It's my first white Christmas and my first away from the family. We received a good dump yesterday so we will start the day with a few runs down the hill. With the new snow yesterday they are opening the Powder Chair today giving us some new terrain to play in.

I worked this morning so I will head to Happy Valley for a free Christmas lunch around midday before apres beers at Unit 231. All staff who have to work on holiday days are rewarded with vouchers for dinner or lunch somewhere on the mountain. That combined with the time and a half wages for the holidays makes working on Christmas and New Year very worthwhile.

We are having Christmas dinner this evening with all the boys and girls of Whitefoot Lodge. One of the guys is a chef so he is in charge of the turkey and ham with the rest of us preparing accompanying dishes. I had the baker throw together some dinner rolls for me this morning and I picked them up hot off the oven around 6am so they will be a nice fresh treat on a mountain where the only thing that is always fresh is the powder.

Hope you all had a great Christmas day wherever you are. Merry Christmas!!!

I've got your nose...

Remember that game you play with kids where you pretend to steal their nose and use your thumb to make it look as if you are holding the tip of their nose...well mother nature played that game with me last week...but for keeps.

The right hand side of the tip of my nose has become the latest victim of the cold. A minor case of frostbite. For the first few days the pain was incredible - like someone was constantly pushing a needle into the tip of my nose. Today the pain has gone, along with the first few layers of skin. It was never so bad that it blistered but I have lost a small patch of skin and will need to be careful now for the rest of the season. One of the side effects of frostbite is that the affected area becomes very sensitive to the cold increasing the chance of my nose suffering the same fate again.

Mof - get those needles cracking before I loose my whole face!!

This wasn't in the brochure...

It's 3:53am...the air temp outside is minus 25...with windchill the forecasters are calling minus 49 tonight...I have all the heaters cranked at work and my hands and feet are still cold. There is a draft coming from somewhere I just cannot work out where.

They closed one of the lifts today - it was considered too exposed to the wind and the risk of frostbite was too high!

The outlook for tomorrow is for blue skies and minus 16 (minus 24 with windchill). At these temperatures I am good for about 4 runs before I can no longer feel my toes, fingers or nose all of which are stinging in pain. You cannot afford to be outside with any exposed skin. Everyone gets around with balaclavas on and no one can recognise anyone.

Hope it is warmer where you are.

Winter is here

We have had an incredible opening week here at Big White. Following the excitement of opening day and the fresh snow that came with it, the mountain's attention was turned towards the opening weekend. Traditionally this is a very busy weekend for the mountain as all the locals (Kelowna folk) head up the hill for their first turns of the season.

The weather up here is terribly difficult to forecast. The mountain seems to create and destroy weather systems. I use about three websites to try and predict what is in store for the coming days and they are all as inconsistent as each other. The forecast for two days in the future can change from a predicted 10cm of snow to nothing overnight...what's with that. But the forecast for last Friday seemed solid. A huge weather system was making it's way across BC and they were calling for in excess of 10cm of snow down in Kelowna and 30cm on the mountain so we knew we were in for a treat. It started snowing about 5am Friday morning and did not stop till late Saturday night. In total we received about 28cm of fresh powder in time for opening weekend.

The scenes at the bottom of the lifts on Saturday morning were amazing. The tragics (myself included) waited patiently in line from about 8:15 for the scheduled opening at 8:45. As the minutes ticked by the queue grew to about 50 people all wanting to be the first person down the hill with 30cm of fresh powder. I caught the fifth chair up the hill and opted for the less popular run at the top of the chair and was rewarded with being the fourth person down the run. The powder was amazing...you could not feel the bottom as you floated down the hill. For most of the run I could not see anything below my knees it was that deep. And when I eventually did loose control the consequences were nigh. You simply fell into deep deep powder. The hard part was being able to stand up again in the powder to keep going. The next few hours were like a race between all on the hill to try to get as many runs in before all the fresh snow was tracked out and only the edges of the runs and trees provided new lines.

By lunch I was exhausted. I had boarded all over the open sections of the mountain and scored some amazing powder sections. I had made plans to ride with a couple of other guys on Saturday morning but when they turned up late at the lift I was not going to lose my spot in the line...there is no such thing as friends on a powder day...sorry guys.

Some more snow is forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday at this stage but that could change any minute. Hopefully it will come and with another chair opening yesterday the mountain is really a fun place to be. I have a whole new section of the hill to explore today... have fun at work!