5 days. First post in this thread! [loud fanfare]
Days 1, 2, 3 were spent at Whistler after Thanksgiving, got to spend day 2 with Lady Salina and her brother. Fun was had by all.
Shamora rejoicing being back on snow at Whistler.
Days 4 & 5 were this past Saturday and Sunday at Stevens for instructor clinics. Stevens opened on Tuesday, then got a bunch of snow Friday, so everyone in the Seattle area who skis or snowboards headed to the slopes as well. Apparently the lots all filled up, and this is even with 350 new parking spaces this year. (Lot G totally rocks, but don't tell anyone!) I've never seen such long lines at the ticket windows and customer relations desks. Thankfully I had my pass all renewed and ready to go. The lines were long at the lifts as well, but they did open up Tye Mill chair and 7th Heaven on Saturday.
Saturday night to Sunday morning it snowed 17" overnight. If anything there were more bodies on the slopes Sunday than on Saturday, which is unusual. Even though I was participating in clinics, we had opportunities to rip off-piste. Well, with all the new snow basically everything on-piste was also off-piste. Good practice for variable conditions and crud. Really the nicest crud day I've had in a long while. It snowed all day, snow was excellent top-to-bottom. They opened up Jupiter on the backside after 1pm, and it was so deep off-piste people were getting stuck in any flat or rise, if they strayed from the main Gemini run that had been rolled earlier. Even on Gemini more snow had accumulated so basically it was a slightly firmer base covered by fresh snow, which turned to chop after 2 runs of everyone bottlenecking that one run. I did a lot of short radius turns, almost mogul skiing to navigate. Much fun.
So, if anyone is snow-starved, maybe a Cascades trip is in your future. Though were we slow to start accumulating snow, it ramped up really quickly and one week later the conditions are awesome. It's been a great start to the season.
Stevens, top of Tye Mill/Jupiter looking over backside.