Big White BC February 19-21, 2007

Mid winter break for the kid. My parents and a friend from Cali wanted a ski vacation too. We decided to give Big White a shot over Whistler this year, on account of their 'family' angle. It's not just pure hype, it is a pretty fun place for kids. My daughter loved the mini snow mobiles It's also a little cheaper than Whistler, and less likely to get rained on.

Monday started off with partly cloudy and then got more and more stormy as day went on. We spent most of the day on Gem Lake. This one chair is about a mile and a half long with 2300' vert, and serves about as much terrain as some entire resorts. The wind at top was punishing and the top 200' was routinely whited out but damn was there some nice wind transported powder on the lee sides of trees once you got off the top. Eventually even some of the old moguls were getting filled in. Gem Lake is a little lengthy to get to from main resort and even more of ordeal to get back. The yellow poles they marked the runouts with were crucial, and we were literally fighting our way upwind. As the evening went on we stared morosely out the condo windows as the visibility dropped from 100' to 50' to 30' Would the next day be a soup fest?

Thankfully, no. The next day was partly cloudy again. and locals and visitors alike delighted to the combination of good weather and plentiful light dry snow. We spent the morning of this day on the Cliff chair, running some of the few really steep runs they have there. But, a note about that - even though the angles of the overall mountain aren't steep, it's still got lots of challenges. Tree skiing through the ghosts, tight glades, odd microterrain like little gullies and rollovers, etc. In the afternoon we tried to find pockets of powder on some of the other chairs we hadn't visited yet, with mixed success. Then, on one of the cruiser runs, my friend Dave took it over a roller a bit too fast and took a sizable wipe, coming up holding his hand up in pain. Said he heard something snap. Doubleplusungood. He could get to the base of the run but after that we had patrol come get him in a truck and run him to the village. His and my evening were spent investigating the successes and failures of a national health system onsite at Kelowna General Hospital.

Final day Wednesday I spend filling in the map of what I hadn't run yet. I didn't finish literally every run in 3 days but I did feel like I saw what it had to offer. Weather this day was mostly sunny with occasional squall episodes. The 7" or so of Monday's fresh could still be found with some effort if you picked really tight lines through trees, or the edges of obscure runs.

Definitely recommendable for folks with families, who still want at least some kind of bigger hill challenges to head for once the kids are turned over to Ski Camp. We managed to mostly dodge the dread Big Whiteout effect. Nice terrain and an interesting change of pace from steep but occasionally soggy PNW. Course, with the snow quality I had today at Stevens, I guess I can't say it's exclusively necessary to drive 300 miles for good snow

Wolfs,

Glad you had fun. No doubt we were lapping each other on the cliff chair Tuesday morning. Maybe you saw us - we had a huge group (four alpine, four tele, and a boarder plus another four friends alpine - of which 6 were teen & younger) though it's hard to keep everyone together... We've been taking that week up there for 11 years running. As you noted, this year we weren't plagued by the legendary "Big Whiteout" conditions. Either that or I'm beginning to develop what the lifties refer to as "eeks-rye vision".

Anyways, fun time, reliable snow, and no crowds after President's day. Let me know if you hit it next year - we've figured out where the pockets of powder are. Just don't tell too many other folks

-Dave R