Cypress Diaries 2011-12

[BlueB]

Tricky face of Cypress... Visibility off, on, off, on, quite a bit of crowd, suggar on ice... But wait for the good part - it started snowing by mid afternoon!
Crew (scattered all over the place): Scooby, Geo & Maya, Bob "Snowman", Boris & Luka & Alan on skis...

Let it snow, let it snow...

[CarvingScooby]

Last day of 2011 and weather was cooperating

Man Made Powder did it's job. Firm Sugar Corduroy, snow hold in the morning.

Play all day at JJA, try a few run on Midway and call it off around 1PM.

Today's toy: Coiler PR179 & SG 185. SG the most stable deck, best ever.

Met Geo and family, I lost you guys as I decided to switch to shorter board and never catch up again.
Unexpectedly met Katsu (Yoshii's father). Boris & Luka + Allan came later on ski.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012

I'll see u guys next year.

RT

[eastcoastcarve]

My plan is to be arriving between 9am and 10am tomorrow and ride until afternoon some time.

Anyone else have the day off?

[CarvingScooby]

Kaz & me will be out there... Whos else? Comon booters get off the couch

get some fresh air and do your turn...

RT

[Cousin of Beagle]

Snow was pretty good.

[CarvingScooby]

Great days, I've been riding 9 hours that 2 days.

John"Eastcoastcarver", Mike"SaKa" was nice meeting you.
John - hard to catch up and Mike keep the good work, wow 3 days and you're trenchin!!

Geo, sorry I wish I can stay longer. After chicken wings & Honey Lager my legs turn jell-o , I guess 5 hours on the slope the day b4 took alot of my legs...I sudn't step-in to Raven cave; Blame it on Rod"Edgy"
More pixs: here

Missing on Saturday was LeSnowman???

RT

[kaz]

Today was great. I think tomorrow is gonna be good too.


I saw 2 accidents up there. One was at the new snow-park (a guy got a concussion). And the other was at middle of JJA.

Watch out!

[eastcoastcarve]

Plan is to bring out the GS board for some faster deeper trenches.

Will be there in the morning to mid afternoon.

[BlueB]

Scoob and me will be there 10am to 1:30pm.

This new "green" park sucks. Totally insane to extand it that wide...
"Red" park will not be much of a problem for now. However, we are in for trouble once the lower park by the Lodge is up and running, as everyone would be bombning from "red" park to "lodge" park, right across a very busy area that's a merger of 4 runs

[BlueB]

Sunny day, small crowd, lots of alpine riders (6)! Crappy snow though - refrozen hardpack with some loose granullar, ice chunks, etc...
Park extension really presents a hazard on the merger above However, the features in the park are a lot better. There are 2 2 big jumps, back to back, now. 1st one doesn't look too big from the chair, but throws increadibly high - kicker is much higher then the landing. 2nd one is even bigger, big height and huge length. I ate it twice on the landing of that one...

It started snowing already at my house, so it should be good at Cypress. More on the otlook for next week! We needed it...

[BlueB]

Snow storm over the night and in the morning, then more, lighter in the afternoon... Wet though.
Luka and me skied in the clear period in between.
Tons of people. Huge schoolgroups for lessons - we saw both Snow School Manager and her deputy teaching the lessons!?

Tomorrow should be sunny, then more snow on Monday...

[xy9ine]

gorgeous day today. packed pow hero groom - the first i've ridden this year. i forgot how good fresh cord was. riding w/ the kid, but he's at a reasonable enough ability now that i tried bringing a board instead of skis. worked well enough; could get in a bit of carving here & there which made me happy. the skis really don't hold any interest. brought the sl kessler - silly fun, even on mellow slopes. love that thing. morning wasn't too bad, but the crowds in the afternoon were insane. every parking lot was full & cars were parked on the road past the xc turnoff. never seen it that busy. people are hungry for snow so it seems.

[CarvingScooby]

Went up today with Peter the skier; 1st run around 10.30AM, snow on JJA start to get choppy. Snow was kind a slow...Mixed crust/crud with fresh snow and some pebble size ice on certain location.
1st time tried Rainbow - need one more dump to cover some srubs. Ice start showing past noon. Hope will get better with a few more dumps.

RT

[BlueB]

Crew: Scoob and BlueB only...
Toys: Kes 170, WCRM 177, WCRM 173, Proto 167

No crowds, yet we still had some close calls - amazing.
Visibility ranged from variable to unlimited. Light snow started in the early afternoon.
Conditions were a bit mixed... Pretty cold and slow snow.
JJA mix of soft and hard pack, soe ice showing through later. Hero snow on Panorama, but super slow.
Midway was ungroomed, we didn't venture there.
Rainbow is now covered, it was a bit soft and semi "buldozed". Scoobycharged and sliced it like a no man's business. I was worried for my floppy WCRM and opted to freeride it.
Humpty was nice, medium-soft pack, pretty smooth.
Horizon nice in the upper range, some ice in the steep mid range, nice but a bit bumpy in the lower mid.

Yestaerday's forecast for today, of 15cm snow, doesn't look likely to materialise. Should be snowing of and on in the hills, for few more days, though.

We are likely to ride again on Thursday.

[Cousin of Beagle]

10:30 to 1:30. Rock Star parking.

Firm softpacked corduroy. Around -3°C. A lot warmer than last Monday and Tuesday. Sunny.

Prior 4WD - 169 cm worked great.

Rainbow has good coverage.

[CarvingScooby]

10:30 to 1:30. Rock Star parking.
Firm softpacked corduroy. Around -3°C. A lot warmer than last Monday and Tuesday. Sunny. Prior 4WD - 169 cm worked great. Rainbow has good coverage.

+1. Thursday Jan 19: The best days of this week. Kaz & me was bombing JJA, Rainbow and last Midway. The first time I heard Kaz don't wanna leave the mountain Too bad BB can't join due last minute E call.
Rainbow has better coverage but not enough, some places are booby traps when you trench it hard. Horizon you still have to watch for one or two sharpy floating "golf ball" rocks. Met Tony "Cousin..." and Bob "LeSnowman".

Toys for the day: Kaz - Ogazaka+VP16(7?), Scooby - SGFR185, KSTBT180, Lesnowman - KSTBT159(167?), test drive latest Burton (no idea which model)
Kaz is always consistent with his clean turn .
This season looks like the SG will play lot more then my other decks, the 20 waist seems does the trick from EC to Ex Carv. Due too perfect carve cond; I had to switch back to SG on Midway and it was a good call. I was be able to push away the board to the fall line and lean to the surface (not pat the dog style) without loosing the board edge grip both toe and heel side over and over again. Not smooth yet but it was a good feeling and snow is firm enough to hold even I move around to adjust body position and the main thing snow was fast.

Friday Jan 20. Kaz & me was so excited to have another good day but it turn out to be a disaster. We need wipers on our goggles that day and infra red somekind to see thru. Stop after 2 runs and head for Lodge and left CM after an hour.

Saturday Jan 21. Met Rod "the Edgy" and later BB + Luka on skiies.
Same foggy condition and I had the WCRM173W on duty and it was a good pick for that day as I choose Raven chair on early runs. Was alot of 5" freshies with firm wet snow underneath. I had a blast on Crazy Raven (#1) & Cayote (#2) . We both bombing these two runs and when both got choppy we move to Three Bears with another untouch run that connected back to Raven chair. It's a tricky run where you have to pick up speed on some spots specially the one that pass thru the parking lot.. I had to bail out at 1PM ish as my liners start compress...

RT

[crucible]

Got up to the hill for 9:00 - parking lot was surprisingly busy... snowing heavily with lots of wind- hard enough to slow you down to a stop on Collins or Panorama if you were being hit by the headwind. Rocked the Prior ATV this morning, but should have used softer boots to make the most of the powder conditions.

Snowed about 6cm by the time that I split at noon- runs were patchy because of the high winds, you could be carving on solid spring corduroy and then hit a patch of windblown powder- went over the handlebars a few times on Jasey Jay because of that.

Let's hope that it keeps dumping over the next 3 days- we sure could use it!

[crucible]

Got up to Cypress by 7PM- stayed until closing- SNOWED 35cm this evening, and it's still coming down.

Fresh powder everywhere- light fluffy, almost Okanogan like in its density- temperatures were still cold enough in the Cypress paeking lot by 10PM that it was a loooooooong daisy chain of so-sp drivers down the hill.

Tomorrow is gonna be epic- I'm taking the morning off and heading up with my Winterstick Swallowtail and my 168 Prior ATV.

Dust off your powder decks ladies and gents- be there for first tracks tomorrow or y'all are gonna miss out.

Geo

[Cousin of Beagle]

9:00 to 11:15

Sunny. Around -2°C or -3°C.

Stayed on the Raven Chair.

JJA and Crazy Raven were corduroy. Didn't ride JJA. Only rode the top of Crazy Raven before entering Coyote 7.

Meteor, First Sun, and Coyote 7 had around 12" to 18" fresh over slight bumpiness. Snow was not dry, but not super wet either. It was ok.

The best run was the Alex Bilodeau run. 18" fresh. Not extremely smooth, but good enough for medium-speed fall-line turning. Faceshots. No bottoming-out. Rode it several times. My favourite for today.

Weapon of the day: Dynastar 3800 - 163 cm.

Snapped the back binding in half.

[BlueB]

Ha, you better start riding h/boots on that Dynastar, they'll stay in one piece

Scoob, Kaz and me were mostly shredding JJA and Rainbow. Short venture to "buldozed" First Sun and sketchy groom on Coyote. Hard work on the First Sun...
Groomers were great untill 11:30ish, but snow changed with temperature, later.

New to me Coiler "Chubby" 177/21 performs great. A bit on stiff side...

[BlueB]

A small storm in the morning only added some thinner fresh cover and messed up the traffic. Later it cleared up and left us with some soft and pretty smooth carving conditions. Crowd was way less then expected on a snowy weekend.

Scooby skied (babysitted) with luka, while I gave a 3 hour lesson to Patric. It went great, I might show some vids later, after the quick edit.

We ran into George and Rod, too.

I had some funny looks and questions from people, later when I rode my alpine board wearing the instructors jacket, with Luka on skis

[BlueB]

Kaz, Scoob, BlueB...
We almost didn't go due to confusing morning reports. We still went, late, and it turned out pretty good!
JJA had visibillity changing all the time, groomers left some monster "death cookies", ahm, I should say "death mellons". Kaz ws trying to chop them down prior to our arrival, but didn't finish the job
Rainbow was frozen until late in the morning, but turned out pretty good, smoother then JJA. Midway was pretty good but surprisingly soft in certain spots.
I fiddled a lot with the binding positions on new to me Coiler Chubby. I thing that I now have sweet spots for hard and soft snow...
Toys: Ogasaka 162(?), F2 Race 178(?), Kessler 183 white, Coiler Chubby 177.

Lift line story:
Me, to a confused liftie looking at 3 hardbooters on empty Midway: "It's an invasion!"

[Cousin of Beagle]

Pow.

Rock star parking 8:30.

Eagle Chair 9:00.

First run Trumpeter. 18" of pow.

Second run First Sun. 18" of pow.

Black on Black, Coyote 7, etc. All had a ton of fresh.

Run of the day: Alexandre Bilodeau's Gold. 24" of fluffy stuff on a 45° pitch. Did this about 8 or 9 times.

Snow was not super-dry, but dryer than last Thursday. Sunny.

When I finished at 12:30, there were clean lines still available on Alexandre Bilodeau's Gold.

Weapon of the day: Dynastar 3800 - 163 cm powder board.

[BlueB]

Gorgeous day! Awsome packed but softish snow, no crowds, good weather!
Crew: Kaz, Couz, Scoob, BlueB + spotted a new carver from Germany.
We trenched the hell out of the hills! Run of the day: Midway, soo smoooooth. Rainbow was a bit crunchy but of nice consistency. JJA slightly too soft, yet still very nice.

Most of the crew will ride again tomorrow. Not too sure about me, though...

[Cousin of Beagle]

On Thursday February 9, there will be snowboard races on Midway.

http://cypressmountain.com/events/cs...y-feb-9th-2012

[BlueB]

I made it to the hill!
Not as great snow as yesterday (warmer), but still good!
Crew: Scoob, Rod, Boris, Tony (somwhere on his own) + 2 other unknown hardbooters spotted.
We did Midway, Rainbow, First Sun (mistake, should have gone straight to First Sun before it softened/chopped), then Rainbow, Midway, JJA, park...
Best snow was again on JJA. I took the Kessler BX over the big jumps, was nervous about titanal composite, but it sailed smoothly. Carves switch really good, the little Kes... My other board for the day was big bad Tomahawk classic construction/shape - really sweet board, handled the chop with ease and ECed good too.

Tomorrow, skiing with Luka; Roy and Rod trenching.

[BlueB]

Very sunny, very slushy later. Few people without t-shirts... Spring in February...
Trenching crew: Scoob, Pierre, Rod
Skiing crew: Luka, BlueB

[Cousin of Beagle]

Afternoon.

Sunny. Soft snow.

Layed one out at the ticket gate, near the lodge. The pic was taken 30 minutes afterward!

[pan]

On Thursday February 9, there will be snowboard races on Midway.

http://cypressmountain.com/events/cs...y-feb-9th-2012

If I can find my friend to replace my snow school training at Grouse that night, I will come over to do the race.

[BlueB]

Lots of rain on forecast, I will not bother...