April 6 at Louise

(file photo)

It snowed ~ 40 cm over the Easter weekend at Louise, and apparently Sunday it was excellent (as I heard Sunshine was)! We headed up yesterday (Monday April 6), and it was still terrific. At the top of Paradise, midday, it was -10C and snowing. Vis wasn't great, but the skiing was soft crud and left over powder pillows off-piste. Even the front of Summit and Upshoots was good.

Suffice to say that conditions at Louise are currently at their prime (for this season), and I look forward to some more spring skiing there. But first, off to Whistler....

Louise going into April

After mountain biking the day before in relatively dry Canmore, we headed for Lake Louise on Good Friday (April 3) for some fun on the sticks. Although there was some new snow during the week, the base looked pretty starved. That said, it was a sun/cloud day that seemed to favour us for the runs down the alpine. We mostly skied ER7 and the Whitehorn Chutes, as they had the softest snow (as such this winter), and a fair bit of windsift overnight.

Just for kicks, later in the morning, we trekked past Brown Shirts, and Boundary Bowl (see pics). We were pleasantly surprised to see plenty of uncut powder/windsift, albeit on a sun-crusted base. It skied just fine, and we had a picnic lunch with a fine view of all the Backside runs. Lots of skiers in various doubleblacks having some great spring runs!

Snowing as this gets posted in Canmore. Monday might be fun for some skiing somewhere....

Back To Louise

As the worst snow year in memory for Western Canada continues, we decided to hit Lake Louise on a Monday morning after a long awaited snowfall of some 5-10 cms. The rather thin base was rock hard on the front side, but surprisingly OK on the backside - particularly ER7 and Whitehorn 2 chutes (that are open). The above video clip was taken on the chutes when the sun broke through in the afternoon.

Ended up being a great day! The snow softened late in the afternoon, and was downright spring-like on the lower front side when we called it a day (at ten minutes to four...). Hopefully more snow is coming!

Update: March 20/15:

Back at Louise - perhaps a few mm's of new snow, and not soft! Flurries all day, so it really did not soften. Visability generally diminished throughout the day. Not stellar!