Silver Star - Day trip...

26th Feb, 2008

Up early this morning, needed to be at the Village Mall by 8am for our bus to Silver Star. When we awoke we were greeted by this....




....the famous 'Big Whiteout', so our decision to go to Silver Star for the day was fortuitous.

It was a 2 hour bus trip, arriving at Silver Star at 10am. The first thing that hits you is how much smaller the village is, or appears to be, also the quaint architecture. Like a lot of ski resorts in Nth America, they go with a theme and all buildings must follow that theme when they are built. Silver Star goes one step further and legislates what colours you can or cannot use. You probably wouldn't want to paint your house in Sydney these colours, but it works well in Silver Star for the old western town theme....







By the time we sorted ourselves out with lockers, geared up and grabbed a quick coffee etc. it was closing in on 11am. Clive and I did a quick shoot up the Comet Express 6-seater to check out a fun route down for the girls. We found the perfect run first up so straight back to the village and linked up with the girls. We headed out and not long after we started it began to snow.

The scenery was just lovely with the snow coming down so a few happy snaps were mandatory....




I then filmed Diane, Lorraine and Clive on 'Far Out' a nice green run, snow falling and a really pretty setting....



....of course the director found it hard to keep his temper, why do these actors refuse to keep to the script 'straight down, don't stop' I said!!!!

I shot another video as we went up the Comet Express 6-seater hoping to capture the pretty village back down the hill. Unfortunately with all the snowfall at the time it doesn't show the village and all it's colour well, but it shows the nice snow if nothing else....



Diane and Lorraine called it a day around 2'ish which gave Clive and I an hour and a half to get some blue run action. We headed towards Putnam Creek via 'El Dorado' run. This is a particularly long run, I'm guessing at least 5km, with 3 distinct sections. The top half was skied on easily the best snow of the week and undoubtedly the best snow I have ever skied on, bearing in mind I have never skied outside of Oz and NZ. After the few hours snowfall it was just a thin fluffy cover...glorious. This is the view about 1km into the run, looking back up....



....the second section of the run is the steep section which leads down to the creek, fairly steep but with the great snow it was quite easily negotiated. The final 3rd is a long runout along a cat track which winds around the creek. Not particularly exciting, but it didn't require any poling, just straightline it and negotiate the twists and turns.

This run took us to the bottom of the Powder Gulch Chair. We ascended the chair and traversed across the top of the mountain looking for some blue runs to take us back down. Whilst traversing we came upon a series of double black chutes which looked just insane. The camera just cannot capture the pitch of these runs, nor the massive moguls (bumps for non-skiers) which cover the runs. This was the entrance to the last of the chutes....



....a pretty sharp dropoff into a field of moguls.

This is the run itself. Note at the bottom it appears to flatten out, but believe me it doesn't flatten out, it just goes from stupid steep to normal steep....



We opted out of the chutes, lol, but found some nice blues further on. Time was limited, we didn't want to miss the bus home, so we had to take the lift back to get back to the village by 3:30.

When we got back to the village we ran into Mick and Carolyn Glossop (Charlottes Pass ski school). Mick said that the new owner of Charlottes had just been over looking at a few things they do at Silver Star and Mick thinks that some big plans for Charlottes will come to fruition. Jim and Sharon (are you there?), we said hi to them on your behalf.

Overall, Clive and I both really enjoyed Silver Star and if the opportunity presents itself would love to return. In truth, we only skied 2 of about 5 areas, so we just saw the tip of the iceberg, but liked what we saw. Diane skied particularly well, I think the snow conditions made a big difference for her. Lorraine, who has skied brilliantly all week left her ski legs back at Big White and didn't enjoy the mountain as much.

We arrived back at Big White around 6pm and it was still in heavy fog, but I don't know if it was like that all day. It snowed really heavily around 8pm for an hour and we can't wait to get out first thing in the morning.

Comment on the comments....
Sue, you are correct that skiing across the mountain controls your speed....Jason, are you reading this?????
Thx everybody, I'm glad you found my fall amusing and yes Karmen, you didn't teach me to fall like that.
Brenda, we have 2 more ski days at BW before we leave on Friday morning. I can hardly believe we are nearing the end of this leg, it has gone sooooo quick.
Casey, good luck at the Athletics carnival. By the sounds of the weather, you should be practising your freestyle and butterfly.