"Cool", because they are, all things considered with recent
weather, in very fine shape with the steady, daily, incremental
improvements of 24 hour efforts by Mountain Crews, Skier/Boarder
traffic and a wee bit of fresh snow.
"Cool" because it's minus 20 degrees C, or 4 below zero F,
and compared to all the recent heat, that's cool.
Please note: Temp's are supposed to rise radically to just under
the freezing mark by tomorrow, for what promises to be a very easy,
super snowy, Winter Weekend... details below....
We actually had a completely different theme for today's diary, but when
we saw this main point below, we set that aside and added all this because
it's really important and a very welcome, much appreciated effort...
The Tremblant Ski Patrol, your best friends on the Mountain.
Know the Mountain Code and Stay Safe!
Scroll---->>> for complete image. This is always a "No Thumbnail Zone"
Pic. environment with images as big as we can make 'em.
- www.tremblant360.com photo. All rights reserved.
- 1.17.13.PB.112812.Ski.Patrol.Support.Safety.jpg (232.85 KiB) Viewed 2523 times
Tremblant Ski Patrol...
1)These very professional, highly trained people are ready to assist you
in the event of an accident and their experience can make all the difference
to your personal health and future well being if such an unfortunate thing
should occur.
2) Based on currently available Weather predictions, this might be our
"One Pic., Weekend Forecast"
From The Tremblant.ca Official Snow Report...
"On Sunday, January 20, Tremblant welcomes the Tournée Sécuri-Ski
that promotes awareness and encourages skiers and snowboarders
alike to adopt a safe and responsible behaviour on the slopes.
From 9a.m. to 3p.m., the tour’s team will provide animation,
hand out door prizes and teach you all there is to know about the
Mountain Code of Conduct. Come and ride safely!"
We "Like" This!!!
Any patient long-term readers here will know we do all
these "Safety Caveats", many of which refer to things like...
"Control Speed"
"Watch out for others who aren't as good as you are"
"Use the Eyes in the back of your head, scan for traffic"
"Slow down, enjoy the views"
"Caution with speed for conditions"
...or any other way of expressing the absolute necessity of
avoiding potential accident scenario's....
So, when we see that there is a focused effort to raise awareness
on this level... we congratulate Tremblant for addressing safety
issues in such a positive, constructive way.
We Ski Tremblant almost every single day we can, and we see a lot,
so as a very rough, completely un-scientific, subject to any reliable
confirmation, guess... we would say that in our opinion, 80%
of accidents on the Mountain occur as the result of excessive speed
for the conditions, and unfortunately, some sort of unknown right
that speeders think they have that others have to "Get Out Of My Way",
as if they own the place. WRONG!!!
If Speed related accidents could be reduced in any way, it would mean
not only less emergency work for our friends in the Ski Patrol, but less
chance of personal injury and less chance any of us might lose a single
precious moment on the "Beautiful in any Weather" slopes of Tremblant.
Moving Forward...
Today's conditions, besides being a bit chilly, will be an incrementally
better day than yesterday as Mountain Crews continue their 'round the
clock efforts on Open Terrain restoration.
Thank goodness that they have a base with such excellent coverage to
begin with, even if it is a bit "Solid".
"Solid" is a lot easier to work with than "Gone".
The fact that the base survived so well is now going to make it
the foundation for all the winter that we should see looking ahead.
Going back through the pic's we have from the beginning of the week
we want to highlight a bit of the process to provide insight into the
massive effort required in Labour hours and Machine hours to bring
back the carve-able top layers and eliminate as much of any icy substrate
as possible.
Essentially, it is a three stage process and as far as we can see,
some of the steps may occur in different order depending on necessity.
Typically, the first step is to break up the icy solid surface with the Grooming
Machines Track Cleats.
This is a file pic. from the Blog we did about grooming(which you can find
from the Homepage Blog list), and we're putting it in here because it
illustrates the scale or size of the track cleats and how far into the surface
they will go with the weight of the machine on top.
- www.tremblant360.com photo. All rights reserved.
- Grooming.Quality.Blog.a.jpg (374.97 KiB) Viewed 2508 times
near the top, as it passes over the entrance to "Devils River", Trail no. 57.
It's pretty clear to see the results as a very course surface of broken up
chunks of solid icy snow.
- www.tremblant360.com photo. All rights reserved.
- 1.14.13.Devils.River.Trail.Restore.Phase.1.Cleat.Track.jpg (303.61 KiB) Viewed 2505 times
Tiller mechanism that is attached to the rear of the machine.
- www.tremblant360.com photo. All rights reserved.
- Groomer.Tiller.Drum.Teeth.11.29.12.jpg (344.52 KiB) Viewed 2467 times
We are showing a file pic. here because it's a really good view
under the Tiller, one that most never see, but it shows the rotating
drums, right and left, that have many rows of extremely sharp Steel
Teeth that overlap around the drum's surface. The drum is normally
laid on the snow and it spins at very high RPM and the hundreds of
sharp teeth, chew up the icy chunks and leave a much finer Granule
that we can Ski or Board on. You can see the heavy rubberized skirts
behind the drums and when these skirts with their Saw Tooth edges pass
over the chewed up particles from the Tiller, what we get left with is...
called "Corduroy".
As third step in the process is Snowmaking, where possible.
The First pic here is a fixed location, that swivels, changes angles
and can be raised and lowered to target specific areas within it's
range.
- www.tremblant360.com photo. All rights reserved.
- 1.17.13.PB.114.Summit.Snowmaking.jpg (328.84 KiB) Viewed 2464 times
also taken on Monday, but importantly, with portable snow guns set
up so Mountain Crews can "Fill in the Blanks" where they need to do
coverage "Spot Repair" prior to the finishing stages of grooming.
The need for this type of coverage repair was remarkably little
and we were surprised by that, but the base has been very resilient
and there has just not been a great need for many coverage repairs.
Hand Held 300 MM Telephoto from top of Expo Quad.
- www.tremblant360.com photo. All rights reserved.
- 1.14.13.Edge.sector.Action.Trail.No.88.Snowmaking.jpg (280.18 KiB) Viewed 2464 times
62(*) Open Trails on the Official, Downloadable, PDF,
Trail and Grooming Status Report, Courtesy of Tremblant.ca
- Screenshot of the Official, Downloadable, PDF,
Trail and Grooming Status Report, Courtesy of Tremblant.ca - Screen Shot 2013-01-17 at 10.56.47 AM.jpg (220.5 KiB) Viewed 2504 times
GO!
- www.tremblant360.com photo. All rights reserved.
- Screen Shot 2013-01-17 at 9.13.40 AM.jpg (96.16 KiB) Viewed 2456 times
Links and not-so-fine print:
http://www.tremblant.ca
http://www.tremblant.ca/mountain/winter ... port-e.htm
(*)
Understanding Trail Counts - http://alturl.com/n54py http://www.tremblant.ca/mountain/trailmap-e.htm
http://www.tremblant.ca/galleries/webcams/index-e.htm
http://translate.google.com/translate_t ... =fr&tl=en#
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/weather/CAQC0360
Forum Index: http://alturl.com/r4cco
Bring Back The Memories... 
Research Future Visits... If you would like to look up dates you visited Tremblant, or you
want to research days/weeks/months to visit, you can sample what
they look like historically, month by month, year by year.
GoTo: Archive, Search Reports by Date: Index: http://tinyurl.com/yktelmu
When reviewing dates from any of the past, numbered, archived pages,
you can use the "Previous Topic" or "Next Topic" buttons, located
screen far right, in upper date/message bar to scroll through sequential
dates, or use your browsers "back" button to stay on the selected index
page for non-sequential date reviews in either forward or reverse order.
There are approximately 6, 25 day Index pages per season.
(
If you "Bookmark" the link above, it will always take you to theFirst index page with the latest posts. That gives you an immediate,
current to 25 day past, review scroll of Winter Alpine Conditions by
consecutive date.)
.