Gem Lake (finally)

We got a smattering of new today but the big news is that Bruce, Dean, Michelle and I finally made it over to the Gem Lake area. The vis wasn't looking that great but the winds had died a bit so we decided to have a look regardless.

It turned out to be a good call.

The reason we hadn't been over here yet was we had heard that the snow coverage was pretty low and it was generally crap over that side. But you have to see for youself sometimes.

The trip over involved a visit to the Powder Chair and a run down the Falcon chair also. This was optional but due to the terrible vis there we missed the run past. In the end though the fog turned out to be the savour cos it probably kept a few people away (or maybe it was just empty on the hill again!)

We took a run called Blue Sapphire down to the 1km+ cat track to the Gem Lake Chair. It was really wide and tree lined. It was groomed with the snow over the top so it was nice fast fun. It also had some big rollers you could launch if you had the balls. That was excellent. The cat track wasn't all that bad either cos you could keep good speed.

They have a nice little log cabin warming hut over here and you can also just drive here and park up. The actual chair is apparently 2.5km long. It seemed like we were on it forever! On the chair ride up we could see some of the reasons for the rumours. Some of the runs still had lots of little trees poking out all over the run. They will need to trim those next year I'd say.

We took the blue run (Kalinas Rainbow) from the top and then popped into a "Caution, Skiing not recommended" run called Talons Claw. The coverage turned out to be fine, there were lots of big features to navigate on the run but it actually was lots of fun cos Dean was looking to launch himself of anything he could.

Unfortunately Bruce came unstuck here and twisted his ankle. He took a break down at the hut while we took another run down the same.

We all headed back after that; I was going to try and catch up with Penny and Bruce needed to sit down!

The afternoon consisted of more snowboarding for me since penny still sore for her fall the other day. I rode with Dean and Michelle again but since I'm writing this a few days later I can't remember where!