Honest Snow Reporting

Would be nice to see more hills be this honest!

from http://www.purden.com/ski/wintersetup.htm

Snow Conditions - Please read carefully!

Word of the day: Sketchy.

The good stuff: December Sun [HTML_REMOVED] Soya's Choice are decent (twiggy) early season skiing, up to the point they meet on the flat.

The not-so-good stuff: The flat area from the bottom of Soya's Choice to the top of Wiskey Jack will have to be skied/ridden with extreme caution, as there is minimal snow cover. A big wind must have blown it mostly all off earlier this week.

Summary: Conditions on packed runs vary from very poor to pretty decent early-season OK. On the non-packed runs it is definitely twiggier, without much of a base.

Recommendations:
Beginners [HTML_REMOVED] children: You should probably pass on this weekend, wait until there is more snow [HTML_REMOVED] better conditions.

Intermediate+ skiers: You should be able to get a few fun runs in. Leave your shiny new $1000.00 set of boards at home, as they will bear some signs of use by the end of the day.

Oh yes and their day passes for opening weekend are $20! regular $53

Grouse could learn a thing or two from those guys. They won't even tell you how much snow fell overnight or even in the past 24 hrs! Their guests should be informed, not kept in the dark.

ski smithers often under reports possibly because what usually happens is on they report say 7cms at the village where the wind howls thru pickingup snow [HTML_REMOVED] depostiing it on the lee slopes in the side country … where you will be skiing all day there might be 15cms blown into the trees

a local realestate salesperson has put up her own weather station [HTML_REMOVED] web cam AKA the Sandra-Cam so its impossible to lie

http://www.sandrah.biz/smithers_weather/ski_hill_weather.php

the hill only has 60cms so far which is really only enough to run the T bars BUT if you get 5 buddies with pickup trucks ,park em at the base of the chair and do shuttles … you got the whole chair side to yourself

that is the best snow report I've ever seen!

Grouse could learn a thing or two from those guys. They won't even tell you how much snow fell overnight or even in the past 24 hrs! Their guests should be informed, not kept in the dark.

if they get some overnight, they'll report it

when they only list 48hrs, that means nothing came down since then. Ya kinda read between the lines. And -1 means anything from -1 to about +3 (degrees I mean)

if they get some overnight, they'll report it

when they only list 48hrs, that means nothing came down since then. Ya kinda read between the lines. And -1 means anything from -1 to about +3 (degrees I mean)

Inclement weather conditions = it's fucking pouring

Yes snow equals snow. Precipitation equals rain. Been skunked by bogus Cypress reports before. Check before you leave and they report -1 and light snow. Drive up and it is raining the entire way. I think their snow plot and weather station are halfway up the hill. Judge accordingly.

somewhere I have a link for a gov type snow pillow on a peak close to powder king and at the same elevation which has been real handy in the past

I got some epic chair side pickup shuttles on saturday ,I organized 5 pickups ready to shuttle this am after a nice little dump …the bastards had locked the gate on us !

Yes snow equals snow. Precipitation equals rain. Been skunked by bogus Cypress reports before. Check before you leave and they report -1 and light snow. Drive up and it is raining the entire way. I think their snow plot and weather station are halfway up the hill. Judge accordingly.

Likewise. I can remember a specific day where I blew off work and went up the hill to slay 35cm of fresh. While waiting for Lions Express to start up someone was coming down from the park chair and all we could hear was scraping, crusty, ugly sounds. Turns out it rained at some point that morning and re-frozen into raincrust. Website said powder. Fucking cypress.

Just saw this guy posted in the Whis conditions thread. Pretty awesome.

http://whistlerblackcombsnowreport.com/west-coast-cement-2344.htm

Last night the Vancouver Canucks reminded us of the West Coast Express, and today Mother Nature reminded us of West Coast Cement!
The numbers in the table above are a bit mis-leading, if there was room it would be saying 23cm of snow in the last 24 hours followed by 10+ mm of rain. For those who struggle with maths : 23cm snow + 10mm rain = ~10-15cm wet cement
I uploaded from Creekside -[HTML_REMOVED] Red chair and when it was still raining as I reached the Roundhouse (elevation ~1800m), I knew the snow was going to be heavy. I did a [HTML_REMOVED]#8216;normal[HTML_REMOVED]#8217; first lap via Upper Dave Murray, which had been groomed it appeared in 2 stages last night [HTML_REMOVED]#8211; one side had approx 10cm of [HTML_REMOVED]#8216;fresh[HTML_REMOVED]#8217; while the other only a few centimeters. I ended up on the [HTML_REMOVED]#8216;few[HTML_REMOVED]#8217; and still my skis looked more like the [HTML_REMOVED]#8216;pizza[HTML_REMOVED]#8217; than the [HTML_REMOVED]#8216;french fries[HTML_REMOVED]#8217;. I am still using [HTML_REMOVED]#8216;cold[HTML_REMOVED]#8217; wax so that wasn[HTML_REMOVED]#8217;t helping much either[HTML_REMOVED]#8230;[HTML_REMOVED]#8230;
I skied straight back to the Creekside gondola and downloaded [HTML_REMOVED]#8211; and I wasn[HTML_REMOVED]#8217;t alone. Oh well, that[HTML_REMOVED]#8217;s what happens when your sport (or your business) is weather dependent [HTML_REMOVED]#8211; some days are better than others. Hopefully the freezing level drops lower and sooner than forecast, otherwise it might not be until Tuesday or Wednesday that we get back to skiing good snow again [HTML_REMOVED]#8211; at least there is plenty more precipitation expected as the level drops.

thank god for the live conditions page and a bit of local knowledge, listened to the snowphone yesterday morning, sniffed through the BS and went back to bed, sounds like it was the right call…..a big ditto on honesty in reporting though, mentioned that to someone yesterday how a couple years ago they could get away with shady snow reports, but in this new age tech has given us a bit of an upper hand to strike back at dishonesty pretty quick….

thank god for the live conditions page and a bit of local knowledge, listened to the snowphone yesterday morning, sniffed through the BS and went back to bed, sounds like it was the right call…..

same here, woke up at 630.. looked out the window, checked the live temps, did some quick math, rolled over and went back to sleep… then hoped the rain would stop so i could go for a bike ride… no luck.

Live temps and the Environment Canada forecast are all you need for W/B. Oh and the patrol snow phones for real reports on overnight snowfall.

If you dig around there are enough online live temp sensors out there that you can get a good enough gauge for most regions that are worth skiing.

Live temps and the Environment Canada forecast are all you need for W/B.

Don't forget the W/B webcams. Between the live temps and webcams that clearly showed some water droplets, it was pretty obvious that yesterday's 22cm of "new snow" were going to be wet cement.