With unsettled weather and new snow Saturday, the guides decided to concentrate on the Wonderland sector of mostly tree skiing and cut blocks. The SW exposure here will get sun affected by this time of year, so they wanted to get on it while it was good. The new snow was very light and dry but got heavier through the morning which was unexpectedly sunny. The heavier snow was no problem to ski untracked, but it clouded over around 1:30 and started to form a zipper crust, more work for those of us who had been skiing the previous 5 days.
We moved to the nearby WNW facing Crème Brulee sector for our last 4 runs, where the powder had the same A+ quality of our first morning runs. Since we stayed in a localized area our cat rides were short and we skied 18,200 vertical, unusual for a first day where you don’t start skiing until the transceiver drills are done around 10:30AM.
Monday was supposed to be the clear day, but since it was clear Sunday morning we headed for the alpine right away. We took a couple of short runs on the way, but Cloud 9 is where we are headed.
We traversed across the top of Cloud 9.
Guide Hayden is where we will start ski Silver Lining below.
This was nonstop mellow skiing in hero snow so I only got this pic of Tseeb at the bottom.
We got to admire our Silver Lining handiwork from afar at our next drop point.
Here we are about to drop onto Showtime, one of Mustang’s signature fall lines of a consistent 1,500 vertical.
I had some concerns as it faces into sun. The snow was a little heavy but it must have been mostly shaded the day before as there was no crust. We saw Hayden get out of the cat on the way up there and poke the snow to test for crust. Tseeb on Showtime:
We returned to a parallel run Smell the Glove. Snowboarder Stu from Toronto there:
The opposite side of that ridge features the shady Roman named runs which face NW and have steep drop-ins at the top. Looking over the edge of Christians & Lions here:
Tseeb really nailed the deepest section at skier’s left.
Closeup lower down:
Stu found a good line far skier’s right.
We moved into the far NW corner of Mustang’s tenure where I had not been before. Here I am with a view to Shuswap Lake.
We did 3 runs out here, Gin & Juice and two on Tina Turner. Flyover on one of those:
It was almost 3:30PM when we got to our highest drop point at 8,000 feet at Eldorado.
The clouds had moved in making the light flat as Hayden sets the line. This was a situation where it was not best to be first. But the snow remained excellent and it was easy to use other people’s tracks for orientation.
We took a run on Cloud 9 starting just above tree line and a final run back to the lodge to finish with 17,100 vertical.
Monday was clear as advertised but colder, starting the day at zero F but getting to about 10F for most of the day. This is still in the comfort zone for skiing when you’re riding the enclosed cat up the hill.
We started with subalpine/tree runs on Rapid Transit and Porcupine and then did an encore of Silver Lining. I was pleased to see we were next skiing Gladiator, which had been my favorite run on my first trip in 2010.
This is another 1,500 foot fall line. Here are Colin from Calgary and John from Seattle.
We took a run on Eldorado then moved northeast via Kiwi Cruise to the Forgotten Claim area of high alpine for three runs. Tseeb took this short steep drop at the end of the first run,
Our second Forgotten Claim run had the longest steep pitch.
The snowboarders were really in their element here. Jay dropped the steep section in 3 turns.
Stu puts up a water ski like plume here, like I remember seeing from a snowboarder at TLH back in 1998.
More from Stu here:
You can tell the quality of the powder by the mist still hanging in the air from his previous turn.
We took one run on Mulberry into the trees then traversed to a cut block of Cat in the Hat. We returned to the alpine for a fourth run. With assistance from another cat group we worked this part of Forgotten Claim quite thoroughly.
Our final run was Mustang’s longest, Fifth Dimension, which I had not skied before. We have a short traverse to get there.
Fifth Dimension faces east but there is a towering rock wall to the south that keeps most of it shaded. It cooled off fast after we got into the shade and I had to stop and put my glove liners on, so I got no pictures of the upper pitch. This was the second pitch.
John at right caught a tip in the snow, lost one ski and managed 3 turns on the other one before losing balance and crashing. Flyover was next and retrieved the ski.
About 3,000 feet down we had to negotiate a sideslip past some running water.
This put us on the skier’s left side which had been sun exposed and had an inch thick breakable crust.
We traversed back to skier’s right to get decent skiing for the last fall line.
We had now skied 4,000 vertical. The run continues on for another 1,500 of questionable snow quality so we traversed out 500 vertical to a higher pickup point.
This run was quite reminiscent of the Galtiberg in Engelberg last month (5,000 of skiing with a 1,000 vertical traverse out). The exit traverse was much easier here. The skiing was consistent settled powder top to bottom on the Galtiberg. Here it was fresher and deeper powder on the upper half and more variable on the lower half.
At any rate Fifth Dimension was quite a grand finale to 19,200 vertical for the day. Mustang needs to send a separate cat for the pickup because it would take the dropoff cat at least an hour and a half to work its way around.
This was one of the more impressive Mustang tours. In overall terrain quality it ranks at the top with my first trip in 2010. The 54,500 vertical was second by only 200 feet to 2013-14, which was quite terrain confined due to snow instability. Snow quality was excellent on an absolute scale but only a bit above average by Mustang standards. But that’s a tradeoff. If you have deep blower powder, often you will be more limited by weather in terrain and quantity of skiing.
