At dawn a layer or inviting looking fresh blanketed everything in view from the window in South Lake Tahoe, but it soon turned soggy at Lake level, but up at the top of Heavenly around 8 to 10 inches had fallen with more coming down through the day.
^Top of Sky Express during a brighter spell on Monday.
^Looking out from the top of the Sky Express.
Snowed on the upper mountain all day, but turned to rain lower down. Snow stayed good high up, started good at most levels, but lower elevations the fresh snow turned to sloppy glue like sludge with the rain. That heavy potentially knee wrenching stuff you get when a reasonable depth of fresh thaws or gets rained on for the first time.
^The impressive newly opened Tamarack Lodge at the Top of the Gondola, opened during this season.
An excursion into the trees near the Powderbowl Express at the close of play wasn’t the best choice of the day, though marginally less endangering to one’s wellbeing then skiers left of the Gunbarrel Chair! Perhaps it was an afternoon for staying high up and retreating gracefully down the Gondola…
Standing in the rain outside California Lodge this afternoon I got a text telling me gleefully that CairnGorm Mountain was the snowiest resort in the world today.
A largely overcast day with some blustery snow showers coming through on Sunday. Weekends inevitably bring crowds to Sierra, being the first ski area reached for those heading from the Bay Area on highway 50, but apart from the Grandview Express and despite Sierra being a fairly compact Snowsports Area queues were pretty short and non existent on the older duplicate lifts and over the back.
Mix of slightly firm grippy snow to loose chalky mid winter corduroy on the groomers. More snow expected overnight.
Heading down the Meyers Grade on highway 50 at the end of the day, far below highway 89 follows the valley floor before climbing over the Luther Pass, to join highway 88 to Kirkwood. With high snow levels over the next day or so, Kirkwood should be catching fresh at all levels with a 7800ft base vs 6500ft at Heavenly and Sierra. A break in the weather forecast later in the week, so hopefully Kirkwood will come good with a bluebird powder day!
2010 was quite literally the year of CairnGorm Mountain’s Endless Winter, with a number of skiers notching up not just 12 consecutive months sliding on CairnGorm itself, but completing the full Calendar Year with sliding every month. The count as of Hogmanay is 14 consecutive months, the New Year and new month will be the 15th.
Here is the year that was 2010 on CairnGorm Mountain, in pictures, month by month.
^JANUARY: Sunday 24th, the final run of the day back through the trees to the Glenmore Gates.
^FEBRUARY: No filters, no doctoring - it really was that blue. West Wall Poma and Chairlift on Sunday 21st.
^MARCH: A sign of the times on Loch Morlich, Wednesday 3rd.
^APRIL: Friday 16th, the Funicular passes an absolutely loaded and full width White Lady with superb spring riding on offer.
^MAY: Beautiful spring snow under blue skies, Coire Cas T-bar, Saturday 15th May.
^JUNE: The lift served season officially ended on Monday 21st. Boarder rides a rope tow in the Ptarmigan Bowl on Sunday 20th. Rope Tows in the Top Basin and lift assisted descents of the Ciste Gully, by walking back over to the Funicular for the Solstice. Ptarmigan Tow run 5th and 6th June.
^JULY: H11lly and Jamie grab some final turns in the Ptarmigan Bowl after a visit to the Ciste Mhearaidh.
^AUGUST: H11lly skiing the Coire Cas Headwall, photographed by George Paton from the Fiacaill Ridge.
^SEPTEMBER: H11lly sets off for some September turns on CairnGorm. My last turns on winter 2010’s snow in the Ciste Mhearaidh, Thursday 2nd September.
^OCTOBER: A beautiful crisp autumn day for the first turns of winter 2011 on Monday 25th Oct. Hiked to the Summit and skied the Marquis Well, and onwards down the Traverse, 105 and upper Cas to just short of the Zig Zags.
^NOVEMBER: Skiers and boarders head out of the Ptarmigan on the first lift served day of the new season, Saturday 13th November.
^DECEMBER: Fresh tracks above the Ciste Bowl on the day of the Winter Solstice. Photo by H11lly.
The now traditional Winterhighland mid-summer slide (planned for the weekend closest to the Summer Solstice) was slightly un-traditional on Sunday 20th June, no trudging up from the Daylodge skis strapped to back and no repeated runs down a solidarity and lonely patch of snow!
Instead a fitting way to wind down an epic season, a summer carnival of snow with the Funicular providing uplift to the Top Basin (and indirectly for the Ciste Gully) and a couple of Rope Tows in the Ptarmigan Bowl, over a 100 skiers and boarders took to the ‘Gorms remaining Summer snowfields.
A very short and hurriedly stuck together video from clips from a small compact camera (it’s time for bed after all that excitement and the first train is only 9 hours away on Monday morning)….
Just some short clips of spring snow fun on the middle slopes of CairnGorm Mountain on the final day of spring, a scorcher as summer arrived a day early! Despite it being warm in shorts and t-shirt, the spring snow mid-mountain was near perfect, loose crunchy granular spring snow, Coire Cas was just a delight to cruise down creating your own pleasently cooling breeze.
A 4 1/2 minute video of the full top to middle run via the Traverse and Coire Cas is also available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ksyIq6DeRU .
Recently the Sheiling Tow AWS had been reporting an unusually high frequency of suspected anemometer icing when the SSC Hut and Loch Morlich weather stations were not. An inspection of the weather station on my last visit to the mountain showed that the anemometer cups were no longer spinning freely and was sometimes snagging the wind vane housing - giving the anemometer an abnormally high resistance to be overcome before the cups would spin, greatly increasing the threshold wind at which an actual wind speed would be reported.
Two wind vanes sitting in the snow
The anemometer was swapped out on Saturday (13th March) and replaced by a brand new one. This is not permanently installed until it’s determined if the old one is fixable, reason being not wanting to cut the long wind vane cable to the length needed for this installation unnecessarily as it could render the vane useless for other sites.
Unfortunately the long cable being bundled up is picking up electrical interference, which has been giving some nonsense wind speed readings on Saturday evening. If gust speed or current wind speed is reported far in excess of other recent speeds or those from other AWS’s on the mountain, it is likely to be false. Will try and fix the Sheilings own anemometer and if this is not possible will shorten the cable and permanently install the new one.
Sheiling AWS back in place as skiers head for home on the Carpark Run late Saturday afternoon.
OK, this is just one distant chart from a suite of some 20 ensemble members from the GFS model, but it’s something pretty special none the less. Complete reversal of the mid latitude zonal winds, Easterly from one side of the chart to the other screaming across the UK.
If such a scenario were to happen it wouldn’t so much be weather, more a complete breakdown of the fundamental laws of physics! Did the Earth’s direction of rotation change?
Having been spoilt by perfect weather and fantastic cover and surface conditions for so early in the season on Friday it was a bit more Scottish on Sunday at CairnGorm Mountain for my 3rd day of the season , with the wind ratcheting up during the day. However the visibility was often better than it was on Saturday by all accounts with some brighter spells. Drifting of what loose snow there was meant every changing stashes and surface conditions.
Top to middle riding on offer, that’s just a shade less than 1300ft of vertical from the top of the Ptarmigan Tow, pretty good for early Dec and having a base on the mid-mountain. While we did have top to Daylodge skiing on the first day open in Dec 08 after the maintainence shutdown, it was quite short lived with most of the early Dec days in the past few seasons restricted to the Ptarmigan Tow.
CairnGorm Mountain kicked of the 2009/10 Scottish Snowsports Season on Saturday with great early season conditions in the Top Basin for warming up those ski legs with the first turns of winter.
All Top Basin Runs are complete and opened on Saturday with the Ptarmigan Tow available from the start and the Coire Na Ciste Tow opening up about lunchtime. The Ciste Fairway is loaded, really good cover and full width between the fences and was the pick of the day on Saturday.
Alas at time of writing the weather in a combination of wind, low cloud and snow shower has prevented the top tows running on Sunday due to appalling visibility. However it’s helping fill the runs in more and more snow is forecast for the coming days.
The upper 2/3rds of the middle slopes on CairnGorm are filling in quite nicely, but the snow level was a couple of hundred feet too high last week. However I managed to post the first full length descent of the M1 on Saturday on a visit to the Timing Hut, a bit of precision rock slalom required right at the top, then a pleasant full width stretch of wind packed snow before the surface turned into ego sapping breakable crust. Some classic Scottish Combat Skiing down the final fenced narrow into the queuing area took me to the foot of the M1 Poma (I haven’t yet looked at the bottom of the skis…). However for those who stick to the prepared area up top, no need to worry about rocks or bringing the old planks.
There is a pisted track from the upper Zig Zags up the 105 and Traverse to the top which provides a easy way up for those touring. You can ski back down this way, but it’s not patrolled and you’ll need to walkout to the Daylodge until there is enough snow to formally open the middle mountain.
The Sortie back down the mountain included a check on the weather stations and webcams and all were functioning correctly with no icing problems on the anemometers. If wind speed at one AWS is consistently 0mph with changing wind direction, and temps have recently fallen below 0c with either wet snow/sleet for a time or thick mist, be suspicious that icing may be an issue. In such conditions take all the AWS’s together and consider what’s happening on the short webcam video clips such as for the SSC balcony to get an idea of whether the calm conditions being reported by the wind vane is factual or not!
It was fantastic to be back on the planks again and the pisted snow was just perfect for making those first turns on, at present Wednesday is looking like the day for a mid-week slide, mostly sunny and winds going Southerly which shouldn’t affect the tows, but provides a great tail wind to spice up the Top Basin. Here’s to a hopefully snowy 2010.
