Panorama Day 1
Panorama Mountain Ski Resort:
Where is It? Drive time is around 31/2 hrs from Calgary Airport, heading into the Mountains on Canada’s Highway 1 west towards Vancouver.
How Big Is it? : Almost 3,000 Acres - That’s a ton more than Turoa for sure.
+ 10 Lifts
+ 135 Named Runs
+. Longest run 6.5 km. (A Penny interesting fact)
Currently Panorama is hosting the FIS Junior World Cup with over 200 athletes competing in the Super G and Slalom. This means that several runs are closed to the public, with limited access to one of the chair lifts. Also some pretty amazing world class skiers scooting around the slopes - eek. This makes a slow kiwi like myself feel very rumpty.
So with today being Day 1 for the tour I took it easy. With several of my other trips notably Gulmarg (pulled calf muscle) and Japan (shoulder) Grace & Loza will remember this injury. I am very cautious the 1st couple of days and make sure Ive got the muscle memory back in gear and Feel'n the groove before I go hard core. Sorry Craig not a lot of vertical today but still 30 days to go!
Snow Conditions: Rain yesterday called off racing for the World Cup so you can imagine what that did to the snow. But in all truth I found on trail conditions pretty damn nice and spring like. The groomers must have done an amazing job overnight pushing snow around. It skied soft and nice, where I was I didn’t see a patch of ice on the slopes at all. It is however looking a little thin in places hey but Im pretty used to that after all.
With the warm temps currently around the snow is melting and water is everywhere. The roads are super muddy and slushy providing some exciting driving conditions. With the World Cup racing on there are currently a lot of folks watching the racing that wouldn’t normally be here so it’s hard to tell how busy the Mountain normally is but ill keep you posted on that. Also the best carpark is closed to the public so had to walk a little distance to get to the lifts - but hey it's all excerise in ski boots.
Snow is forecast for tomorrow so that should freshen everything up although I did think that conditions even with the rain event were pretty damn nice. (Sorry Turoa).
Also missing my buddies from all my previous trips namely the fam - Ellie, Loza, Phil, Craig, Grace, Blair, Scott, Alice and Brent. You guys know what your missing!
Yours in Skiing AJ