Camp Fortune - December 28, 2022

Last Wednesday, a seemingly unannounced storm dumped 15cm of snow in the day’s early hours. With legs still sore from the night before, a smaller group of the crowd from the previous night decided to drive up and enjoy the fresh snow, in addition to a new black diamond run being open on Skyline (Bud Clark to Canadian). We arrived at 3:30, parking this time at Skyline, and headed straight to the lift. There was a heavy fog and light rain/snow in the air, which made for a cool picture just as the lights switched on  

Despite the warm weather and recent snowfall, the fresh snow had fallen after grooming, making conditions were extremely mogully and icy! Compounded with a larger crowd turnout than the evening prior, and this created a slightly unsafe atmosphere with people speeding down trails, and people having fallen in the middle of them! However, the moguls were still fairly soft, and definitely added a fun and challenging aspect to the evening. After skiing a few runs on skyline, we headed to the main lodge for some food, where we discovered that another trail, Slalom, had opened spontaneously! We immediately headed there, and were blown away at how amazing conditions were. (Slalom is center in the photo)The posted sign said ungroomed snow, yet the many moguls on the trail were freshly formed, and were extremely soft and skiable (significantly more mouldable than compared to the other moguls on skyline!). Additionally, there were patches of fresh powder on the sides and on top of the trail, making this run our favourite of the night. I also chose to hike a few minutes higher, and benefit from some fresh powder turns above the trails main entrance:After many leg burning laps on the soft moguls of Slalom, we headed back to Skyline, but found that conditions there had further deteriorated, particularly on the black run. The first and steepest pitch of Bud Clark had become pure ice, with massive moguls awaiting at the bottom, in addition to the other pitches containing a medley of large ice sheets and large moguls. In our last run, all members of our group fell in different sections of the trail, leading us to call it a night before closing to avoid the chance of injury. All in all, we had a great time for our second night at Fortune, and looked forward to returning in the new year!