Glencoe Mountain Resort

After missing Saturday’s pisted runs, I was determined to get up the hill early. 

Forecasts for Sunday had been for a cloudier day with colder temperatures.

Before taking the access lift I could see the clouds swiftly moving over the hill, it was pretty bright though with the sun breaking through.

After walking to the Cliffhanger chairlift its a quick walk to the Main Basin T-bar, where a few others were waiting for the groomers to finish doing there thing and for the T-bar to get the liftie and ski patrol up to check things out.

Conditions on the hill

Taking the first lift up, it was soon apparent that Main Basin had been groomed to perfection.

The sun had started working on it to so it was softening nicely despite the colder temperatures.

It the top of Main Basin I was in two minds whether to take some pictures or go get some turns in. I went with the latter.

Turns were smooth and buttery. In stark contrast to the end of the previous day.

In fact I got slightly carried away on some of my turns, washing out for a moment as I tried to stretch while carving. The sun was out and the wind was brisk, but not a concern for further uplift. The temperature was probably around freezing, but the wind chill did make it feel pretty nippy. 

I didn’t really consider exploring any other runs as they were all closed officially, although the word on the grapevine was that the Baillie’s was offering some great spring snow. The main Flypaper is broken at the bottom so is not patrolled as recovery stretchers cannot be skied in.

I was pretty content to lap the Main Basin, without stopping for lunch. I kept going till last lift at 4pm. The corduroy groomed run had been great up till around 11am then it slowly returned to corn snow on an icy base. It didn’t get as choppy as the day before. Probably because there were far fewer skiers up today. In fact it was only a handful of familiar faces that was in the Main Basin all day.

The afternoon skies started to darken as the clouds thickened. There was even a light sprinkling of snow or hail that started to fall as we left the hill for the day.

More binding Issues

After shifting my forward lean on my bindings I had been enjoying more responsive turns. Yesterday I had the mechanism break on my Union Contact Pros which are a few years old, so I had let that go as wear and tear. However, I took my other board up today with my new Union Atlas bindings. I enjoyed my first few laps until realising on the lift up that my front binding didn’t seem to have much forward lean at all.

I thought the mechanism had slipped over the heel cup as had happened on my older bindings, but when I checked it out, I noticed that the mechanism had actually snapped off. I couldn’t believe it. Two broken bindings in two day!

They are still ridable of course, but they don’t give the same response, especially when its you leading foot. 

I tagged Union Binding Company in my stories and they responded, although without resolving anything. They just suggested maybe I shouldn’t tighten them so much. I’ll update how the resolution goes. 

Ironically after finding the freshly snapped off part of my Atlas bindings, I found the orange part that broke off my Contact Pros the day before!