Red Mountain, BC 2/28/11

After nearly 30 hours of travel which included the delay of my 5 ski pals until the next morning, putting off our first day of skiing by one day, six of us arrived at Red Mountain. After a 3 hour drive from the airport we spent our first hours in Rossland gathering consumable supplies and settling into our cabin.

We skied today in beautiful powder conditions. It has been snowing 4-6" every day for the last week and continues to do so. It isn't dumping, but it is continuously snowing, with occasional breaks in the snow. There was wind and ice fog and we had a nice 20 minute dump of graupel late in the day. But all in all the conditions were powdery. Not thigh deep powdery but a soft boot-top powdery.

We started our day with a warm up lap on the smaller Red Mountain with our host Roly. Roly wanted to see how our group skied and the three people with rented fat skis needed to dial in.

Then we went over to Granite Mountain and Roly took us on a tour of The Powder Fields,The Slides and Buffalo Ridge that kept us on the lee side of the winds that were bringing in the snow. Three laps on the early 3000 vertical feet of Granite Mountain got us quite hungry and ready for lunch by noon.

We are staying at a slopeside cabin that belongs to Red Shutter Inn, home of Big Red Cats. It sleeps 4 pretty comfortably and has a minimalistic kitchen that we've prepared all our meals in so far. It is pretty rustic with a wood stove and a nice deck that sits high over the Red Mountain Road. It was really nice to come back, kick off the boots, the ski pants, try out the gear and have a nice lunch of turkey wraps and snacks we bought at the supermarket.

When we returned to the slopes, the Motherlode lift was on windhold, so we took three runs on Red Mountain through Poochies and War Eagle Trees. There are plenty of interesting steep trees on the 1500' vertical the smaller of the two ski mountains that make up Red Mountain. The Motherlode lift was up and running at 3pm so we went up for another 3000' and skied Beer Belly. Rochester Mark and his Rippa Sista went up for another 3000 vert while the rest of us limped back to the cabin. Interestingly Rochester Mark and Rippa Sista are older than the rest of us, both of whom have crested the 50 mark and outskied the rest of us who are still in our 40s.

Today is day 1 of 7, and we skied good n hard on a beautiful powder coated mountain with not many other people. In fact we had the afternoon on Motherlode to ourselves, and didn't see another skier.

Tomorrow we are going cat skiing.

Here are some pix from today










and the whole album can be viewed at:

https://picasaweb.google.com/sharon.heller/RED_DAY1?authkey=Gv1sRgCN7D6sLOw8mx4AE#

This is just GREAT STUFF!! Thanks for the post PQ!

It sounds like your return travels are going much better.

Man the trees look really really nice!

Way to rock Rochesta and Rippa and all.