Going Grey - Red Resort's new slack country

Red Resort in Rossland, BC, opened this weekend to bluebird skies and excellent coverage, at least on the top 2/3 of the mountain. It was one of the best opening days I can recall, with boot-top powder, sunshine and no lift lines.

The view from Grey a couple years back. The newly cut runs on Grey mean wide open lines right to Easy Street and back to the lift. Good times.

On Sunday I did my first slack tours up Grey Mountain to check out the new runs cut for the future lift expansion (slated for 2013-14, if it pans out). The new terrain is a blast – wide open with some great features. And judging by the parade of people walking up there, it’s going to be very popular as a slack destination this year.

I’m not sure when the snow cat will start transporting people to the top of Grey for $10 a pop, but even then it’s going to be a fine 20-minute hike to get some easy powder turns.

Conditions-wise in the Rossland Range the weak layer that was releasing 50-70 cm down seems to have stabilized a bit and the 15cm of snow Friday over the nasty rain crust made a big difference. South aspects are still a bit of a poo sandwhich with several persistent faceted/ice crust layers. I did observe natural releases 50-70cm down on the northeast face of Mt. Roberts and skiers triggered slides on the same layer in Papoose Bowl and Beer Belly earlier in the week before the resort opened.

Some north aspects, at least in the northern part of the Rossland Range, seem to be more stable with a fairly consolidated snowpack down to the late October/early November faceted layers buried a meter plus. While this is encouraging, if it does release it could be big. I’m leery of any unsupported north-facing aspects.  It should be noted that all north aspects are wind affected in the alpine to sub-alpine, getting better as you get lower, then getting worse as you get to the thinly buried rain crust. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with loading from the coming storm cycles. Bring it on!