February 9, 2016 Whistler

We drove to Whistler on the 8th which was Family Day in BC.  You quickly learn that it is the second Monday in February, the family is not working, and everybody seems to be out and about – skiing, sightseeing, etc.  At 3:30pm we were driving north, and the cars going south were bumper to bumper from Squamish to Lions Bay.  I've never in all the years that I've been going to Whistler seen traffic like that!  The beautiful warm weather probably didn't help...  Check your calendar for the Family Day in Alberta which is on a different date.

We each used one of our tickets from our Mountain Collective Passes and had a wonderful sunny day.  The views were great and the only lift line of the day was at 7th Heaven.  We parked at Creekside to be close to the lift to start our groomer day.  Before our trip I tuned the skis and was happy with the edges.  Groomed runs were OK when the sun hit them, but the groomed runs that did not receive the sun were chalky -- that is a high tech word for white icy.  It was warm up top and getting slushy in the sun, but when you made the wrong turn into the shade  you weren't happy.  We skied Whistler and Blackcomb, and they get mixed reviews from the groomer standpoint.  It's difficult to make “chalky” into loose granules instead of golf balls!  The forecast for the 10th wasn't great (rain/snow mixed), and it wasn't worth staying up there for another day as we'd originally planned.

Thanks for the tip on Family Day - good to know!

I've always heard "chalky" used to refer to sintered powder type snow - firm but edgeable w/o the loud noise that one gets off edging on ice. Often found on the to of the bumps up in Powder Bowl at Crystal, for instance. At least back east, "white ice" was referred to in snow reports as "frozen granular" - a particularly fun turn of phrase. When groomed, it sometimes became "loose granular" though less awesome grooming could indeed yield what we called "chicken heads" despite what the snow report might have been saying. If you can hear the skiers turns from down in the parking lot, it's a sure sign that you've heading up for some frozen granular fun - a good reason to have nicely tuned edges! In any case, I resist the deflation of the term "chalky" to equate it with "frozen granular!"