The situation looked grim as I drove west towards Sunshine Village. The forecasted broken skies were turning into a solid greybird. And with warm temps having taken hold of The Bow Valley the day before, my expectations for my afternoon on the slopes were low, low, low.
I met up with Kevin Hjertaas, local ski patroller and prolific freerider, at the top of the SSV gondola and he felt much the same way. Our day had all the makings of a “you-should-have-been-here-yesterday” scenario. Or better yet, “you-should-have-been-here-three-weeks-ago”, because that’s the last time that it snowed around here.
Either way, I was just happy to have someone to drop into Delirium Dive with because, without a partner, one will be promptly denied access to Sunshine’s most cherry slice of terrain. And even if the riding’s not great, good company can always cushion the blow of lackluster conditions.
Kevin mentioned on the way up that the coverage was actually pretty on par, if not a little better, than seasons past up high at Sunshine. It’s just everything below 1900m that’s taken the brunt of this unusually warm season.
When we got to the top of the Dive and peered down into it, we exchanged a nervous glance. The grey skies didn’t exactly sell the massive cirque of spines, chutes and cliffbands. But both of us grew up riding in The Rocky Mountains, so it wasn’t as if we were gonna turn around.
We picked our respective entrances in Bre-X, the more north-facing side of the cirque and I dropped in first expecting death-slide ice, but was instead greeted with super edgeable Styrofoam, the kinda shit you can sink your teeth into and ride with a healthy touch of aggression. You could even get faceshots…sort of.
It may not be pow, but the terrain’s as good as it gets.
If you threw your board(s) sideways enough, it was as if someone was taking handfuls of climbing chalk and throwing them into your face.
Sure, it wasn’t perfect. But when it hasn’t snowed in almost a month, you shut the f#$k up and take what you can get.
Kevin Hjertaas, showing that classic Rocky Mountain technique above the exposure on Delirium Dive’s Starbucks.
Kev dropped in after me and, as he has the tendency to do, made it look easy. He may not have been quite as stoked as I was (as long as I can get an edge in these day, I’m right jazzed). But I think that he’s just a little too aware of how good it can get in there. . .
It’s actually looking like the real Delirium Dive might stand up this weekend after a Pacific storm rolls through the area and dumps upwards of a foot of new snow.
After parting ways with Kevin, I actually hovered around until Patrol sweep so I could partner up for another lap through there. It was like the whole skiers’ left hand flank of the cirque had been, for lack of a better expression, groomed by God.
And who am I to skip out on conditions like that in this day and age?
Groomed by God?
Keep an eye on that incoming storm here…