May 16-17, 2007 Blackcomb

Blackcomb is operating until June 3 and you can still utilize your Shell 2 for 1 coupons until then.  Starting June 4, they start glacier skiing and the coupons are no longer valid.  The weather forecast was for partly sunny days and the sunny part arrived during our lunch and after 4pm.  We were amazed how deserted the ski slopes were.  You have to download the Excalibur gondola but there was enough snow to ski down to Excelarator express.  We found that at times we were the only skiers on a trail - a very unusual experience at Blackcomb.  After cruising the slopes off Excelarator, Jersey Cream and Seventh Heaven, we took the Crystal Road to the top of the Glacier Express chair and climbed Spanky’s Ladder to ski the Jewel Bowls.  We were cruising with our backcountry gear just in case we had an urge to use the skins to get to new terrain but never needed to use the skins.

I kept looking for other skiers in the bowls and we saw no one during our first ski descent or on our 10 minute traverse out on the Blackcomb Glacier road to the base of the Excelarator quad.  Our first run was down Garnet Bowl then dropped over Spanky’s Shoulder into Ruby Bowl.  The snow was soft with about 3” over a consolidated base.  Ruby’s is steep but wide and provides plenty of turning room.  Old avalanche debris was unconsolidated and areas around rock faces were isothermal.  After lunch, we returned to Spanky’s and skied Garnet down into Diamond Bowl.  I had an old magazine article from Skiing in November 2004 that had the following description:”The only thing separating Spanky’s Ladder from a straight shot 2000 feet down Diamond Bowl to the valley floor is Diamond Center, a vertiginous, hourglass chute that feeds into the upper bowl”.  I unfortunately had forgotten that description when I said to Jill “ looks good, follow me”.  It really did look good until it rolled over into the hourglass with a big rock outcropping in the middle.  We worked our way thru the hourglass slowly then started breathing again as we entered Diamond Bowl and it opened up.  Looking back up Diamond Bowl, I think Helter Skelter would have been a more "sane" descent. The snow was soft with a consolidated base and the turns were enjoyable.  During our second run we did see 2 skiers above us heading for Spanky’s Chute and 2 skiers below us along the Family Jewels run. We did see a single ski standing vertical at the base of Wild Side with no signs of the skier.   The Jewel Bowls have an enormous amount of snow with steep terrain everywhere.  With 2000 feet of steep corn snow and few if any skiers, it was easy to ride the lifts for $25cdn.

The following photos were taken in overcast conditions but they provide a glimpse of the scale of the terrain available off Spanky’s Ladder.

It sounds like you had even less skiing companions than we did last weekend. We had prettier weather,though. Too bad that you didn't drop into Sapphire Bowl. After the somewhat scary entrance, it provided the cleanest run of the day.
I posted some photos elsewhere telemarktalk.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=35082