Christmas Day on Blackcomb

Submitted by amym on Sat, 2009-12-26 14:13

Ryan McRae playing around in Fraggle Rock chunder. Amy McDermid photo.

Ryan and I became members of the Christmas Crack O’Noon club and rolled up the hill at 12:15p.m. We started the day off with a short hike up Grey Zone and skeid straight down to Coff-Chocolate at Crystal Hut. The Hut was serving up waffles like it was nobody’s business and the place was packed. Coff-chocolate (I’m trying to start a trend here) was followed by a lap down Fraggle rock, where we ran into more Christmas Orphans (not actually orphans) Matty Richard, Austin Ross, and Cheddar Watson. The fellas were skiing speed and jump runs and we even spotted a lovely set of their figure-8 tracks somewhere on Blackcomb later in the day.

We declined an invitation to join them because we had a mission in mind, namely something off of Blackcomb be it Corona, Husume, Disease, or DOA. The bootpack was well worked in because it hadn’t snowed in more than a few days and it didn’t take long to get to the top of Body Bag bowl. There were a few more Christmas orphans at the top enjoying the sunset and downing some beer before hopefully a big Turkey dinner.

View of Decker Mountain and Disease Ridge. Amy McDermid photo.

Disease looked good, so did Decker and everything else for that matter, but we decided on DOA because Cheddar skied it earlier in the day and said it was in good shape.

Ryan looking down DOA. Amy McDermid photo.

I freaking love DOA. It’s such an aesthetic line and also super fun to ski. It gets the end of day sunlight and is a beautiful way to finish off a ski day. The entrance was pretty slick because it looked like quite a few people had enjoyed the line in the past week, but we could see that the guts of the chute were looking very inviting. We skied down to the apron and the snow was perfect. The sun had warmed it up just enough in the chute that it was nice, soft, easy to ski crud. The apron was really taking a beating from the sun, however, so we chose to ski out to the right and avoid the really rocky areas on the left as one portion of it had already slid.

If this is what being a Christmas orphan is like, I don't mind.

Lakeside bowl was dotted with packs of more orphans hitting booters and enjoying the sunset. We skied a final few powder turns down to a groomer and made our way down the mountain to turkey, turkey, and more turkey. I’m still full.