I've also gotten out on a few tours. The snow is definitely not what I've been spoiled with in the last few years and the weather is so erratic here that it's hard to get the good snow windows to coincide with my days off. However, it always feels great to be away from the resort, put the skins on the skis and be in the stillness of the backcountry. One thing that the Island sure has going for it is that it is definitely not crowded in the backcountry.
On December 23rd I went for a quick solo skin up to the old closed down ski hill at Forbidden Plateau, about 30 minutes from my house. The resort closed in 2000 due to consistent low snow, but since it had snow at the moment I thought I'd check it out. The old runs were definitely very overgrown with nasty alders and saplings, and the low snowpack made the ski down generally bumpy and inconsistent, but there was 4 inches of light powder and the sun came out half way up. All in all it was just a nice day to get some exercise although I don't think I'll be returning to the area anytime soon.
Happy to be on the skins. Hadn't had them on since mid November.
Found some cool rime/frost formations on the trees.
The sun and blue ski emerges above the abandoned ski lift.
The view before dropping in.
On the 30th of December, I went backcountry skiing on Mt. Cokely, a 1600m peak about an hour and a half south of Courtenay. Cokely also used to have an old ski hill there that was shut down due to low snow, although unlike the one at Forbidden, the removed the lift so you can't even really tell that there was a ski hill. Our initial plan was to ski the main bowl of Mt. Cokely, but sketchy dust on crust conditions with bad fall potential over water falls made us retreat to mellower ground. Here's Bill skinning towards the main bowl before we retreat with our tails between our legs.
We then took a lap down mellower terrain and found dust on crust conditions. Here's Bill skinning back up for the second of 5 laps we made.
On our 4th lap we decided to try a different aspect where the wind had blown more of the pow in to. We found about 5 inches of nice wind blown powder on top of a crust. It was definitely the best skiing of the day. Bill skiing the nicer snow.
On the skin back up from lap 4 we crossed under some fun little cliffs and spotted a short little chute that looked fun we threw the skins back on and had to ski it.
Bill heading in to the little chute.
And in it.
The ski out to the car was also good as we found some nice pow through mellow trees.
