Race season is over, and as of yesterday there was a 200cm snowpack on the ground at the Environment Canada automated weather station at the Callaghan Valley. The groomers only have contracts through the next two weeks, but there is quite a line-up of camps scheduled right into May, so we’re looking at a long Spring of great skiing. The photo to the left was taken April 1. That’s Amy, Chris Werrell, and Ron Carmichael (one of the groomers for the venue). Nice day, with heli skiers working the slopes visible in the distance. The day before, Chris and Amy went mountain biking in Squamish, while I skied up to the Callaghan Country Lodge with Amanda Ammar. Callaghan Country Lodge is situated further up the Callaghan Valley - about 12K and 500 meters above the venue. It was sunny in Squamish the day we skied up there, and we skied through a localized storm that dropped 15cm of new snow on top of a 3.75 meter snowpack. It’s a lot for an Eastern boy like myself to absorb.

The 200cm we’ve got on the ground at the venue right now is within a few cm of last year’s snowpack at this time. In general it hasn’t been as snowy a season as last year. It started out very well, but then the weather got warm a nice in February and we dropped from about 2.5 meters down to about 1.6 meters. However, March has seen a very active weather pattern culminated in a week of craziness at Canadian Nationals. That’s brought us back up to the 2 meter mark, and the conditions have stabilized recently with cold nights allowing things to set-up very well.

The season has given me a really new set of experiences. I’ve had the opportunity to do more intensive testing than I’ve ever done before, and it looks as though that opportunity will continue for quite a while this Spring. The Callaghan Valley has stretched my understanding of the snow/ski interface quite a long way, and I’ve learned a huge amount. It’s a little scary how much there is left to learn about this place, and how little time there is until the Olympics. What seems clear to me after this year, and in examining historical records, is that there is very little grounds for predicting what conditions might be like in February of 2010. It could be literally anything. Rain, snow, ice, slush, powder. It’s all in play. It’s all in play on the same day. In fact, it’s all in play on the same day, on different parts of the course, at the same time. Canadian Nationals was a challenge, but it wasn’t the most difficult conditions we saw this year.