Calgary and BC Ski Trip – Day 6

Today we went to a real mountain. Julie and Will impressed upon Sue and I that Fairmont is just a hill really and that before we finish our trip we have to ski a real mountain. The mountain of choice was Panorama. Will was telling me about how cool it is if you stay on the mountain in a time share. You can walk from your door to the lift, and there is gondola that takes you down to the shops and back. The nice thing about this is you don’t have to drive anywhere.
The temperature was cold again in the morning about -13 C and the Panorama website was reporting the same conditions they’ve had for a week. No new snow. After the comments from the people at Fairmont resort I was a little leery. Fairmont had been ok because of the groomed surfaces, but I was dying for some deeper softer snow to fall on.
We decided to leave around 11:30 and hit the slopes of Panorama for a half day.
The half day starts at 12:30, and we made it there right on time. The drive from Fairmont to Panorama was a pretty one. We headed toward Invermere then veered off the highway just before to make the trek through the mountains to Panorama Mountain Village.
As we neared Panorama you could see the snow getting deeper along the highway and it looked like it had a nice top layer of powder. The roads were very clear and Julie had no problem with the roads.
We arrived at Panorama around 12:00pm, unloaded our gear from the truck, and donned our boots and helmets etc. It was a short walk up a few flights of stairs to reach the lift ticket booth. This served as a warm-up for my already exercised thighs.
Panorama Mountain village has everything to offer the vacationer. Besides 120 runs on a 4000 vertical foot mountain, there are places to shop, restaurants to eat in, pubs to tell tall tales in and hot tubs within easy access of your rooms to soak those tired muscles after a day of skiing. They also have packages for multi days of skiing that work out to be a better deal than purchasing individual days of skiing, in fact they work out to about half or less of the price multiplied by the number of days you want to ski.
Lift tickets purchased (Half Day is $56.00 per adult) we headed for our first run.
The chair lift was a 1 mile Quad Chair that makes it to about the half way point up the mountain. Panorama is utilizing today’s technology to gather statistics on their visitors so they can tailor their services to meet demand. Their lift tickets have two pieces. One piece is a barcode that rips off the bottom that you can hang onto just in case you loose your lift ticket from your jacket. The other piece has the same barcode and a punch-out where it can be attached by means of a vinyl strap to your zipper for display and scanning by the chair lift attendants. I guess with the strap instead of the typical wire that is sandwiched between two folded glued edges its easier for the ticket to come off when you wipeout, so they advise you to sever the bottom barcode and hang onto it just in case you loose the main part so you can have it replaced if necessary. (Quite smart really)
After being scanned we lined up in gates to board the quad and begin our ascent to the first level of runs. The lift is much more comfortable than the 3 person lift at Fairmont and has a padded seat and slows down before you get in so it’s easier to board.
The lift flies up the hill at a good clip and the protective bar that comes down has a place for your feet (and skis) to sit. I learned you should hold your poles outside of the bar and bring the bar down inside the poles otherwise you get sandwiched and have to lift the bar again to get them out. Will learned to move your arm fast before the new guy tries to close the bar on it…Sorry Will.
We arrived at the end of the first lift and opted for a green run down to warm up our legs. Julie and Will did the blue to the right of it.
It became immediately apparent that all the talk of icy conditions at Panorama and how Fairmont had the best conditions, was overstated but that the ice was present in some of the more challenging runs at the black level. For the novice to intermediate skier, the conditions were great. The run down was awesome. Using my new found skills I easily shooshed my way down the hill. The base was much softer with a few inches of softened snow to make turns easier and only a few icy spots to watch out for. Julie and will played in the moguls on the blue run to the right of us on the way down the first run.
First run completed I was feeling confident and ready for the summit.
After being scanned by the handheld telxon or symbol scanners we boarded the 1 mile quad again and went back up. Once leaving the quad we had to go to the right and ski down to the champagne express quad, then get off that and ski down to the summit quad. Now this is a long way up.
The view atop the summit was almost indescribable. I guess the best description that comes to mind would be breathtakingly awesome. You had the view of 1000 peaks in one direction and mountains in every other direction as far as the eye can see. Clouds danced about the mountain tops obscuring the view of the mountains behind. The roads at the base of Panorama looked like pencil lines drawn on a map.
A few pictures for posterity and a look down the Double black diamond runs (and a shiver of fear) was enough to prepare us for the decent on the non-black slope. I found the run I wanted. It was aptly named “Get Me Down”. This is a blue run that is basically a 12 foot wide road that wound its way down the mountain switching back from time to time.
I started out snowplowing my way down, and then my thighs were getting tired so I began to practice my shooshing and controlling my speed.
At various points down the run there were blue and black slopes cutting across the road and down to the next intersection of the road and the slope. Will found his spot early on and he was off finding his way through the trees and moguls down the hill on the intermingled black runs. If I had done them they would have been black and blue runs…ha!
Julie stayed with Sue and me for the most part, venturing off the road here and there to hit the moguls and shortcuts meeting up with us again at the various intersections.
Sue skidded out on one turn and ended up on her but, then struggled to get up and get moving again. I was already ahead by a bit so I waited and took the opportunity to change my lense in my goggles from the tinted lense to the clear lense. The sun was disappearing and reappearing and I was finding it hard to see with my tinted goggles but it was too chilly on the face when you were moving to not wear them.
I managed to get the lense replaced and sue managed to get up and ski down to me. We set out again and met up with Julie a short while afterwards. We stopped to wait for Will as we hadn’t seen him and Julie had lost him too. In the process of lining up beside each other to wait for Will I managed to trip and toppled over into Julie so she went down like a domino and we ended up lying in the snow laughing about falling when we weren’t moving. I was laughing at Julie trying to get up. You can tell she doesn’t fall much because she’s out of practice getting up. I on the other hand had mastered both the art of falling and getting up with skis on.
We continued on down the run in the same manner as before. Sue and I decided to take a mogul run in once spot that skirted across the ski road in a couple spots. This was cool. I almost lost control having a hard time turning in the moguls, but regained control and stopped slicing the top off of one.
We met up with Julie again just before another 3 person lift that took us back up the hill a bit where we could ski down to the 1 mile quad and then down from there. We skirted across the infamous Fritz run then down one of the blue runs near the one mile quad.
We found will at the bottom. He said his legs were wiped and that he had ended up in ice in various spots and he really had to work not to wipe out. He decided to go into the T-Bar Grill and order some Beverages for us while we did another run. We checked our watches and our lazy decent stopping to gab and look around had taken us 2 hours and 45 minutes. Wow now that was skiing.
Back to the 1 mile quad and backup to the first level, and then back down a blue run again.
Sue and I thoroughly enjoyed these runs; we all found the surface much better than what we had been skiing on at Fairmont. You could feel the cushion under your skis more and it was easier to turn if you looked for powdery snow.
I started practicing the quick turns two and fro and shedding my speed that way rather than long S turns across the slope. I finally had it down and had my balance.
Sue had one spill no the way down, so I stopped to make sure she was ok before proceeding. It wasn’t a bad fall, so she only got a two rating for that one. (We had been rating our falls on the Julie scale from 1-10. I had a 7 a couple days ago, but thankfully that was as high as I got because I think a 10 meant something got broken.)
We decided on one more green run so we boarded the 1 mile quad again and made our last decent. My legs were feeling fatigued so I stopped quite a few times down on this one so as not to get too weak and risk ruing my perfect record today.
After finishing the final run we removed our skis and headed to the T-Bar grill to recant our experiences while enjoying a refreshing beverage. My beverage of choice is usually Guinness. “Let Darkness Reign!”
We ordered a nice artichoke and crab dip that came with small sliced up soft tortilla and a plate of nachos.
I met a couple nice chaps from East Anglia in England (just North West of London) and found out one of them had just arrived for a two week vacation from England. The other, his friend was working at the resort and had been from the beginning of the season. He was a snow board instructor and told me I had to give it a try if I had ever skate boarded, water skied, or wake boarded behind a boat. I told him I had all the learning I could take for one season, but next year if he was still there, I would look him up.
A few beverages later and our bellies full from the tasty snacks we headed back down to the truck, loaded up our gear, and made the journey back to the time share.
The drive back was pleasantly uneventful and before you knew it were relaxing and playing Euchre till we hours of the morning. Thus ends Day 6. In my opinion this was the best day of skiing we had for the whole trip.
Tomorrow we begin the journey home.