Lake Louise - January 29, 2012

As of this morning, Lake Louise recieved 26cm of snow in the past 24 hours with 17cm of that falling overnight. On our first run up, you could see some evidence of wind loading in unusual places, including Grizzly Gully (lookers left on the way up Top of the World). Down towards the summit this made for some fun terrain skiing from drift to drift - as long as they didn't surprise you!

Lake Louise has now opened Whitehorn II all the way to H-gulley, but most of this terrain wasn't open right away as the snow safety team had to deal with the wind-loading to make sure everything was safe before it was opened. This made for some slight delays in getting the backside open, along with the Paradise chair, but there was soft snow on the front-side in the trees to play-in while we waited for it to open. The snow was great in wind-sheltered areas, where the snow was often much deeper with no wind slabs. 

On the more exposed aspects, there was certainly evidence of some high winds which continued through much of the day, but it didn't matter since the snow was a lot of fun. The wind also added to some entertainment value when riding Paradise chair as you could watch wind-crust snag tips of skiers below, resulting in elaborate ski-ballet.  

There are no pictures from most of the morning, since we were having too much fun to stop skiing, but we did take a few in the afternoon before our 2:30 lunch stop. After that the clouds blew in and the crowds thinned out on the backside. H-gulley was interesting once the next storm blew in, but it was dropping big flakes when we were leaving the parking lot.

We put up a few more photos showing some of the conditions.