The season is drawing to a close, only 2 days left… I’m looking forward to getting home, to the people and the stuff I’ve been missing. I know that when I get back, I’m really going to miss the snow!

On thing that does drive me scatty over here, is the sales tax. You only see the pre-tax prices, and there is more than one type of tax, so it’s not always the same percentage added on. This makes it really difficult to work out how much you will actually be spending, especially when you are at the supermarket.

This year was great for snow. All runs bar one (Turnpike 1 – the steepest run) are still open. At the weekend we had 30cm+ in 12 hours, 20 of them in 6 hours. Yesterday we woke up to 25cm at the summit. What a day! It’s a shame that I happen to have been working every single powder day, but I did get 3 really good runs in yesterday. Did a couple of front flips, nose dug into the knee-deep snow, and flipped me over so quickly I landed on my feet and kept going! Yes, I had the camera rolling, but it would have been awesome to have had the 3rd person view.

At the weekend there was a snowboarding competition, the Easy Rider Cup. I entered and competed in the banked slalom in a ride break. There were no prizes for being the fastest, but $50,000 worth of prizes were given out randomly to competitors. Everyone got something, and then we were entered for the grand draw. 16 snowboards to be won. I won a pair of medium female salapets in the first draw (so I’ll be selling those), and then won the biggie in the grand draw… A brand new snowboard, as well as a set of bindings! All that for $25. Nice. It’s next seasons board, so you can’t buy it yet. I still can’t believe I won it!

While I’ve been here, I’ve only visited 3 other ski resorts. Lake Louise, Kicking Horse and Revelstoke. Last week was when I visited Revelstoke with a group of friends. It was snowing heavily on the upper slopes, and raining below the top of the gondola. The snow was knee deep everywhere, and while the visibility wasn’t great, the snowboarding was awesome! Hard work on a trad(itional) cam(ber) board, my left leg was really aching by the end of the day, and I was drenched from the times I went to far and had to board through the rain to the gondola mid-station. IMO Kicking Horse is the best resort I’ve been to over here, though this season at Panorama has been excellent!

Last night was the final Karaoke and Lifty Jug night down at Copper. It was a great night. Most of the Lifties were present, and I sang 4 songs. Moondance, Come Fly With Me, What a Wonderful World, and something from Glee that I still have no idea how it goes, and I’m not sure any of the other Lifties I was ‘singing’ it with knew either. As is the way with large group numbers, the Glee song was less melodic, and more drunken shouting. The other three songs I did solo 😀
Today, it seems all the Lifties made it in who are supposed to be in, most of them are nursing hangovers, one or two of them I’m not sure have actually reached the hangover stage yet. Good job the hill is really quiet today, and that not all the lifts require you to get in the way of heavy things.
A bunch of us will be having fondue tonight, and then on Sunday evening when the lifts have finally shut down, there’s a big Mountain Ops BBQ and beer party. Should be good.