drh wrote:At 6 AM this morning it didn't look promising as there was no new snow showing on the Cypress snow stake. However, Avalanche.ca had called for 10-15 CM of new snow last night and the Seymour snow stake showed about 15 CM this morning. Turned out to be lots of fresh tracks to be had at Cypress at higher elevations. Had some fun turns on Blow By, Slash, Tomcat, Ripcord, and Top Gun.
ZeroR2 wrote:drh wrote:At 6 AM this morning it didn't look promising as there was no new snow showing on the Cypress snow stake. However, Avalanche.ca had called for 10-15 CM of new snow last night and the Seymour snow stake showed about 15 CM this morning. Turned out to be lots of fresh tracks to be had at Cypress at higher elevations. Had some fun turns on Blow By, Slash, Tomcat, Ripcord, and Top Gun.
Thank you for the updates. I have passed a few times and then you post how good it was. What is the best source of information you use to get the conditions? I kind of just check the webcams, but it doesn't look that motivating.
drh wrote:ZeroR2 wrote:drh wrote:At 6 AM this morning it didn't look promising as there was no new snow showing on the Cypress snow stake. However, Avalanche.ca had called for 10-15 CM of new snow last night and the Seymour snow stake showed about 15 CM this morning. Turned out to be lots of fresh tracks to be had at Cypress at higher elevations. Had some fun turns on Blow By, Slash, Tomcat, Ripcord, and Top Gun.
Thank you for the updates. I have passed a few times and then you post how good it was. What is the best source of information you use to get the conditions? I kind of just check the webcams, but it doesn't look that motivating.
Shortly after 6 AM I typically look at the websites for Cypress, Grouse and Seymour to look at their webcams and snow reports. Sometimes Seymour and Grouse will still have the reports from the previous night which can be helpful as there may have been snow falling after I last checked the day before. Then around 6:15 AM I'll look again as Seymour and Grouse will have updated their conditions. I also check the forecasts from Snow-forecast.com for Cypress as well as Seymour and look at the predictions for the bottom of each hill as well as the middle. An important one to look at is Avalanche.ca forecasts for the North Shore Mountains. They usually put it out around 5 PM each day, and occasionally update it in the morning if there's a significant change. The biggest issue is that Cypress Mountain reports their snowfall totals from the snow stake cam which is at the bottom of the hill near the lodge. The problem is that it is often around 0 C or plus 1 C at the bottom of the hill so there may have been rain at the bottom of the hill while snow was falling from mid mountain and up (but you have no way of knowing if it has or not since there's not a second snow stake higher up). So if the forecasts were calling for significant snow above 1200 or 1300 M during the night, there's a good chance that you might get some nice powder turns from mid mountain or higher, even though the Cypress snow stake cam shows nothing. Note that Snow-forecast.com usually tends to underestimate the expected snowfall while Avalanche.ca tends to overestimate. However, it is usually a crap shoot as you often have no idea what the conditions are going to be like until you are up on the hill. It can be raining in the parking lot when you arrive but then you find out there's great snow higher up. Of course sometimes you find it's raining top to bottom and what new snow fell higher up is too wet and sticky, or maybe it all froze during the night and it's all a miserable crust. It's usually a guessing game as to what the conditions will be like but sometimes it ends up being better than you expected which is always a treat.