jun 11, 2008 - season in review

ok - i think it's safe to say the winter season is over. we did get a few more cm's this past week, but the freezing levels haven't been close to the valley in a while. the snow's all gone on my favourite bike trails, WB's closed for the season (except summer glacier), time for the season recap.

i would say '07-08 had a lot of similarities to '06-07. early season wasn't as good, we got a lot of good snow around the new year, but it was pretty much done by the end of january. the main difference (improvement) over the previous season is that the temperatures were consistently colder throughout the winter which meant far better snow preservation, and very little RAIN! in fact, there was only the one super disappointing dump on Dec 3 that turned to freezing rain and ice, and other than that for the most part our storm systems maintained freezing levels close to the valley with no major temperature spikes, and no freezing crusts.

having said that, the final numbers don't look nearly as good on paper:

2008:
cumulative snowfall: 1019cm
deepest base depth: 257cm on Feb 7
no. of days of 10+cm: 35
no. of days of 20+cm: 12
no. of days of 30+cm: 3
no. of days of 40+cm: 2* (1 of those days was completely covered over with ice crust)
personal days riding: 69
powder days: 35
epic days: 2 (dec 17 and jan 7)

for comparison, here are the stats on 2007:
cumulative snowfall: 1406cm
deepest base depth: 334cm on mar 25
no. of days of 10+cm: 43
no. of days of 20+cm: 16
no. of days of 30+cm: 7
no. of days of 40+cm: 2
personal days riding: 74
powder days: 41
epic days: 4 (nov 25, dec 15, dec 26, and jan 7 again)

interesting side note - on jan 7, 2005 i recorded it as best day of season so far. for all the trip planners - i guess jan 7 is your best bet!

guess that sums it up for this year. not sure what the future holds at this point, but the plan is to keep up the posting next winter. catch ya then!