Mum in Lessons; Dad in the Dive

I had a much stickier back on Wednesday morning, and found myself still in bed 10 minutes before I'd agreed to meet up with Mum and Dad. We'd all agreed that Mum would benefit from a lesson, so I booked her a discounted half-day private lesson with an instructor I thought would get on with her particularly well. So we saw her off at 9:00, then Dad and I went off to find some more challenging runs.

Unfortunately, there'd been quite a severe freeze-thaw overnight, so the mountains which started the day in the shade were really icy and cruddy. We stuck to Wawa in the morning, but despite our aim to get into Delirium Dive the mountain was too frozen and it remained closed. I did, however, get the chance to show Dad Side Door, the out-of-bounds area off Wawa, and I also showed him that not all our lifts are permenantly soaking!

We met up with Mum again at noon, and she asked us if we'd been in the Dive yet. We told her that it had been closed and we hadn't found the chance- but she'd just been to the top of Divide and had seen the board saying it had been opened up! So while she changed and popped back to the room, we took the Standish-Divide route to the top of the Dive.

The Avalanche gear that I'd rented for a pack of beef jerky each got us through the gate, and hiking up the trail, we could tell that we were the first punters to go in the Dive since Ski Patrol had opened it up. On reaching the top, I showed Dad the route selections, the cliffs to avoid, and the general view. We went down the steps, of course, and after clipping on the skis and taking a couple of photos, we went in.

Being the experienced Diver, I lead Dad in and took him down Steel Pipe. The snow was a couple of inches of powder, with a layer of hard hail-like snow on top. With the sun shining through a gap in the Cumulus, and maybe 3 other tracks at most, it was easily the best conditions i've ever skied the Dive in.

I lead Dad down to the line of the bottom of the chutes, then let him lead down the less steep, more open area underneath. Next, I showed him the route to the exit valley which DOESN'T involve skiing in between trees and down a small cliff! The snow here had frozen, but had also been softened nicely by the sun and was very pleasant to ski in. Of course, the tracks were fresh...

We skied down to the gondola base, not passing a single person (although, there were only 300 people on the mountain...), then joined Mum for lunch in Trapper's. She told us all about her lesson, which had gone really well and she had loved everything her instructor had taught her. She pointed out that no-one had spotted that she was still skiing as if she was using straight skis, but her instructor had picked up on this instantly and spent the rest of the lesson making sure her posture was better and even helping her get a better boot fit. We were all impressed by this, but neither of us more than Mum who really felt her skiing had been revolutionised.

After another great (and cheap!) lunch, Dad and I headed to the Dive again, which was luckily still open when we arrived. This time, we took Mum with us (although she walked up the viewpoint path without her skis) so she could take a few photos. We trecked down the stairs again and entered with Dad leading this time. I watched him ski down Steel Pipe again, but this time he tried to avoid some rocks and found himself perched on the ridge between two chutes and without enough space to turn. He sat down and turned his skis round to turn on the spot, but as he moved his lower ski into position, he started sliding off (towards a cliff!) and his upper ski detached and started sliding and tumbling downwards. In this steep terrain, the brakes don't make a huge difference! Dad continued to slide until he stopped just before a 10-foot cliff. I skied quickly down to him, but he was able to slide across off the side of the cliff, braking his fall with his ski, and controlling himself to a stop. I guided him as he stepped downwards and backwards towards his ski, and it wasn't long before he'd clipped it on and I came to join him. I found it pretty exciting but nothing compared to his view of the whole thing! Even worse, Mum was at the top watching but at least she couldn't see the cliff he was sliding towards...

Top of the Dive

Anyway, once our pulses had returned to normal, we traversed across to a different chute to take us along a different route out of the Dive. This chute was untouched, although covered with what looked like crud from an avalanche blasting that Ski Patrol had done earlier that day. We avoided the crud initially, but soon found it was so soft you could ignore it completely! Some great turns lead us down to a tricky traverse that cut away from the main valley and onto the face towards Goat's Eye, a (technically out-of-bounds) run called Fat Boy. This was beautifully wide, soft and untouched, and we skied down it side by side before entering Eagle Creek, the route back down to the gondola. Eagle Creek is normally a very tricky, windy route, but the snow was so wet and soft (and untouched) that we could just point our skis downhill and not exceed a 'speed limit' of about 15 km/h. We decided not to jump the cliff onto a flat landing, so continued our route down to Wolverine.

Dad and Me 'doing our thing'

Wolverine took us to Tee Pee Town lift, which we were originally only using to take us back to the Village. But the runs back to Tee Pee town were so much fun, being steep yet soft and absolutely deserted, that we did 2 more runs before the lift closing time arrived and we ran back to the village. Mum later told us that she met Ski Patrol on her walk back down from the top of the Dive, who told us that the Dive had been closed for the day and wondered how she had got up there. So that meant that we were both the first and last pair to ski Delirium on what I thought was the best day in the Dive so far!

Of course, we were all ravenous, so after a dip in the hot tub we went for another excellent meal in Chimney Corner. Then reviewed the photos from the day, as the skies opened outside and started dumping a heck of a lot of snow on the resort...