New yrs day report
Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 9:18 pm
The Weardale Ski Club Ltd
Today has prompted a name change to Val de Weardale. Skiers + boarders were greeted with beautiful powder snow with some fantastic drifting and excellent skiing + boarding. All the gulllies + streams are filled, the deep snow is light enough to ski + board almost anywhere. What more could you want? Its not often that you hear the term powder days and back country skiing and people are talking about Weardale!
Tows will be running tomorrow - hopefully from about 10am and also Sunday - the answerphone will give further details. The road today was as bad as predicted and I don't think will be any better today. 4WD or chains are essential and even then cars without a lot of ground clearance will have to take great care over the deep ruts where the road flattens out after the long climb.
For some reason a lot of people seem to have broken chains this season - I have had 3 reports in the last few days. I am not sure whether this is because of cheap chains or the road conditions but take care with them and remember most chains need to be re-tensioned after driving a few 100 yards or so.
We have had visitors from far and wide with 2 today from Poland and Belarus (I don't think they travelled from their respective homes just for WSC) and then yesterday 2 Polish lads caught a bus from Newcastle to Bishop Auckland, a bus from there to Westgate and then walked up to the ski lodge before anyone else had arrived! They had a great day - just rewards for their enthusiasm. They were kindly given a lift back to Newcastle by a new member Liam. Lift sharing is a great idea especially with current road conditions - the fewer cars the better - so please try and share lifts or make use of the Facebook site.
Finally apologies for any delays today - we seem to have had a bad run of flat batteries which has caused a few problems with the bottom lift as well as other machinery. We are doing our best to sort it out and should have everything up + running tomorrow. The cold weather is set to last for the forseeable future - I am not sure how long it has to remain frozen over before we can claim to have Permafrost but make the most of it
Steve
Today has prompted a name change to Val de Weardale. Skiers + boarders were greeted with beautiful powder snow with some fantastic drifting and excellent skiing + boarding. All the gulllies + streams are filled, the deep snow is light enough to ski + board almost anywhere. What more could you want? Its not often that you hear the term powder days and back country skiing and people are talking about Weardale!
Tows will be running tomorrow - hopefully from about 10am and also Sunday - the answerphone will give further details. The road today was as bad as predicted and I don't think will be any better today. 4WD or chains are essential and even then cars without a lot of ground clearance will have to take great care over the deep ruts where the road flattens out after the long climb.
For some reason a lot of people seem to have broken chains this season - I have had 3 reports in the last few days. I am not sure whether this is because of cheap chains or the road conditions but take care with them and remember most chains need to be re-tensioned after driving a few 100 yards or so.
We have had visitors from far and wide with 2 today from Poland and Belarus (I don't think they travelled from their respective homes just for WSC) and then yesterday 2 Polish lads caught a bus from Newcastle to Bishop Auckland, a bus from there to Westgate and then walked up to the ski lodge before anyone else had arrived! They had a great day - just rewards for their enthusiasm. They were kindly given a lift back to Newcastle by a new member Liam. Lift sharing is a great idea especially with current road conditions - the fewer cars the better - so please try and share lifts or make use of the Facebook site.
Finally apologies for any delays today - we seem to have had a bad run of flat batteries which has caused a few problems with the bottom lift as well as other machinery. We are doing our best to sort it out and should have everything up + running tomorrow. The cold weather is set to last for the forseeable future - I am not sure how long it has to remain frozen over before we can claim to have Permafrost but make the most of it
Steve