It Does Not Have To Suck

It's probably fair to say that skiing in Western Canada right now is pretty bad. Temperatures that are too warm (15C has been reported), precipitation that is too scanty, and Pineapple Express systems that are too frequent. It's hard to know exactly how bad it is because most people seem to mountain biking or climbing at indoor gyms, not skiing, but, maybe that says all that needs to be said. 

This chart of Whistler historical snowfalls popped up on my Crackbook feed a few days ago with the comment "be glad we're not back in 04/05" which was all the impetus I needed to see what exactly Doug and I got up during the winter of 2004/2005. Specifically, I wondered if bad snow necessarily means a bad ski season. 

I didn't tally up my actual ski days for 2004/2005 but I did discover that we climbed 39 different peaks, did two ski traverses, and went on four hut trips. Certainly these broad brush strokes don't imply a bad season. Looking closer at the data, we certainly had less than ideal conditions on many days. Various rain events, wind and warmth events are mentioned, there seems to have been lots of crusts and much wet snow, but there was also many sunny days with safe and fast travel conditions that we obviously made the most of. I can actually remember this year fairly well as we did many long ski trips and traverses going up and down many peaks and into many valleys that I had never visited before. 

Zig Ziglar said "Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude" and that certainly seems to have been the case for us in the winter of 2004/2005. Enough said.