Took Friday off work and excercised my legs on Yad Moss. One of England's premier snow resorts 🙂

Oh yes 🙂

Enjoy the weather!
Paul

Ace! I've been meaning to try and get up there but I can't easily get my car out at the mo and I read that the Hartside Pass road was closed. Where did you travel from and what was it like?

Up M6 to Carlisle, across A69, down A689 to Alston. 🙂

Cool thanks – how is the road from Alston?

Really enjoyed it there last season. Was the lift working? 🙂

Road passable by many in 2WD. Poma was fine, if a little tricky on a board! Got in 25+ runs.

Perfect alpine conditions. Could, and did board anywhere! 🙂

Ta – will try and get up there next week I think.

Some YouTube vids from Thursday and Friday 🙂

Mmmm!

The weekend thaw saw minor snow loss at Yad Moss, holding up but looks like going colder. Looked at 14day forecast for alston on netweather.tv and that is showing repeated freeze thaw but atleast some snow building.

Tiller time – things not seen in the pennines before

Flickr slide show for 17th Jan 2010

How does Yad Moss compare to Allenheads up the road?
http://www.ski-allenheads.co.uk/

Just down the road from me, wish I had the spare time to pop over there for a day.

Great stuff Paul 🙂

GrahamS Completely different, a quick round up of all four pennine clubs

Allenheads – Two 145m(ish) rope tows. About 40m descent. Good for begniners, kids and a spot of fun is no where else is open. Someone usually builds a couple of jumps. Club members only at weekends. Membership now closed. Its basically the pennine nursery slopes.

Looks better with snow

Harwood Ski Federation – One 500m rope tow. About 90m of descent, two runs. Good for seeing how it all used to be. Now with website. Open to all when open which is less often that the others – hence the appeal for volunteers on the website. Prob can cope with about 70-80 people. Site is one of the best snow holding ones in the area.

Harwood from top:

Harwood from bottom:

Yad Moss – One 600m Poma, 120m of descent. 10 runs under full cover but that is using pennine licence. Some are different sides of the same fence. Good for piste. Exceptional cover by modern winter standards this season. 30-50cm of snow on runs last weekend. Gets very busy – 20min queue for 3-4 minute run at weekends when 200 plus people turn up. No ticket sales after 11:30 at weekends. Did I mention it gets very busy at weekends.

9th January 2010 – tail end of best conditions in a generation

9th January 2010 – tail end of best conditions in a generation

and about 2 hours later – a powder purge of the hill

Weardale – two button lifts, 800m combined length, 160m(ish) descent. 8 runs (ish), huge off piste under good conditions. Longest run around 1200m but involves a bit of traversing at top. Best for terrain, lumps bumps and gullies. Not much snow fencing, mainly relies on natural hollows. Huge gully system runs down length of tow. Only very rarely in condition but when it is its a half pipe. To good to be true – yes – closed to non members at present. Membership is 700 people until last year was well under 200. Weardale overview (not mine) from the sunny side of the valley. Under full cover everything you see here goes.

At the moment we are having one of the old pennine winters – the ones that caused the skiers form clubs and build tows out of scrap. Then buy proper tows, piste bashers etc. The bashers normally see action each year but the tiller hasnt been in action arrived in 2001. Unfortunately thin winters will come back but its just good to have something to show the mockers and knockers. Can't really complain at 25 days skiing in 12months for £50.

Brilliant. Thanks for the summary oldagedpredator.

I'm gagging to go, but sadly way too much stuff to do in the house to prepare for baby.

Nnnnnngh! Why couldn't it have snowed like this last year??

It did, we all thought that was it and this season would be 2 days on sedge.