The first two days were great. The base was mega-thin, but
there was a decent layer of fresh- just enough to hide the rocks and
stumps. Everybody was getting core shots, but nobody seemed to care. We
were all just having too much fun.
We started off with a couple of Murray
laps, and then did a hike to the top of Shale slope. We were going to rip
shale slope, but half way up the hike we realized that there wouldn't be any
fresh left once we finished our hike. So we dropped down the back side of
VD ridge and got some nice alpine turns. We had a pretty tight bush-wack to
get over to Grand Finale, but it only took a few minutes. Grand finale was
hilarious-- tons of trees, shrubs and rocks, but we bounded through it and
ignored the sounds of the core shots we continually got all the way down.
Highway 86 wasn't groomed and was fun for some switch pow. The rest of the
day was spent cruising around on the barely covered mountain bike trails.
The fact that they had minimum snow coverage on them made them extra fun, as
the features were still really discernable.
Blackcomb opened thursday, and
it hadn't been touched so it was pow all morning again. We lapped Jersey a
few times, before heading over to Catskinner and Zig Zag. Again, the
coverage was really thin and we could hear rocks ripping apart our bases all
morning, but opening day fun always trumps your cares about gear!
TAGS: Graham Haywood, Sean Nixon, Whistler Blackcomb
