Virgin Power Appreciation Society

Panorama, BC, Canada

I didn't know what to expect from Panorama, especially as many people were quick to label it as boring, not challening enough or too busy. One marketing brochure even labels it as "Corduroy Heaven". We spent the night in Invermere, and it can safely be said, there's not a lot happening in that town.

We need not have worried though. Overnight a storm had come through and by the time we were riding the lifts, over 20cm of snow had fallen and it was still snowing.

We started easily enough and headed gunners right to the far right 4-pax chair. The snow was pretty sweet, but hidden underneath was a hard crusty layer that was ready to bite you in the butt. We did a couple of runs off that chair, before dropping down into Sun Bowl where the underlying snow was more forgiving and we had a cracking ride. Halfway down in amongst all the people was an Artic Fox running along the edge of the trees. I stopped to watch it, but it wasn't hanging around and by the time my I got the attention of my buddies, the fox was gone.

After that we did a run down the front section, before heading over to the left towards Taynton Bowl. There was plenty of sweet stuff here, and although a lot of it was tracked, there were sections that weren't. There were plenty of tree roots here though and it was easy to ding the base of the board if you weren't paying attention.

The day finished on a downbeat as we had gone off and had a bad run through Sun Bowl, ending up in trees that were too tight to ride properly. Eventually we came out above the terrain park and we hit the jumps before heading back to the car. There's a point just before take off when you know if the jump is going wrong, and by then it's all too late. Somehow I started to pitch forwards in the air, and there was nothing I could do about it but land in full belly-flop mode. Of course, I received absolutely zero sympathy from anyone - quite the opposite in fact.

Of course, any mountain can be good when it's dumping with snow, and our day at Panorama proved that - that's not to say it's a bad place. I aim to go back and see what it's like in a dry spell.