A beautiful morning to stand in queues, sunny and cold, well what did you expect.
I must say I felt so sorry for some of the new lifties, especially the girl on the Fiacaill poma. Some how the queue got turned around and went down the stairs, across burnside and up the ramp to the car park. This was fine if you were coming from the day lodge or car park but not if you were trying to actually ski the runs! No one had told her the lift can load from two sides so the folks could ski the fiacaill and was sending them towards the carpark to take off their skis and walk back. A lot of very upset people. A quick word to her and she was full of apologies and things started to return to normal.
With great fanfare the west wall poma opened to the public then with a puff, hicup and grunt it broke down numerous times. It has not run with full loading since it was extended and the the teething problems were evident. I hope it behaves like the Fiacaill. Yesterday it broke down a lot for its first day but now is running fairly well. Heres hopping the WWP behaves tomorrow.
With numerous quality ways down to the base station, M2-Daylodge, Fiacaill Ridge, Jeans Bowl, Burnside and the car park run. The fiacaill tow and train were under strain. The train queue was out and zigzaging around the car park.
There has been no fresh snow but the temperatures have remained very cold keeping the quality high where pisted but as you would expect with the very high volume of traffic the runs were being scraped in some areas.
Over yonder is quite narrow and was well scraped by the end of the day. The queue to the WWP was occasionally quite extensive so I kept away as much as I could. Surprisingly the ptarmigan and ciste tows were reasonable for queues, possibly as it was bitterly cold at the top with freezing fog moving in in the afternoon but also many were top to bottom skiing.
The M1 tow, well the race training program has started, just keep away unless you like swarms of 10 - 16 year olds full of self importance pushing and shoving. When they were not there is was actually quite civilised. The queue was mainly self managing with most knowing the strange multi line system. And even a few, after you, no after you going on, polite society is not dead, well not yet, just wait for mid term.
The skiing was good, cold snow, soft were pisted and quite abundant. If you are coming up tomorrow be prepared to wait, and wait, and wait.
People pictures going on face book later
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Graeme
Over view of the front of the mountain
Looking over to the zigzags from the fiacaill poma
The M2 is still the intermediate dream, the problem is still the day lodge which is scraped and ice at the mid to bottom.
Take heed of the signs, there be sea monsters beyond this point. Otherwise know as the west wall poma bucking bronco.
The west wall poma, good snow on the tow track. The Aonoch Bowl looks good but is very slabby, not good at all. I will let a few boarders to track it out before I try again.
Edited 2 times. Last edit at 18.39hrs Sat 20 Jan 18 by WindyMiller.
Attachments:
M2.JPG (164kB)
Over Yonder.JPG (215kB)
WWP.JPG (176kB)
Zig Zags.JPG (210kB)
Over view.JPG (196kB)