Short Day

Steve could only tour for part of the day because he had too much school schtuff to do, so we headed to 5 Mile Basin for some quick fun. I wanted to check out 5 Mile because I haven't been touring around Whitewater since last Saturday and I was a little concerned about slab avalanche formation over the past week. 5 Mile never dissapoints. It has lots of variety and lots of options for a variety of snow stabilities. We dropped in off the ridge at 6850 feet and dug quick snow pits after trying to ski cut the slope with no results. The snow was fairly solid with no solid slab formation off the ridgeline. The lower we got, the heavier the snow got and, naturally, the more cohesive and slabby the snow was, however, it did not appear to be at that critical point yet. More load and warmth and it should be a concern. Anyway, we skied a great line through glades and trees for a nice 1100 foot run in heavy, but still pleasantly soft snow.

Here's a vid of Steve gettin' er' dun.



Me pretending I know how to jump off of stuff.

Road Trip

Headed up to Valemount earlier this week so France could check out the helicopter job potential up there for the summer. But since we had to go through Revelstoke, we had to stop and ski the new resort. It's a big mountain. Lots of vert. And fortunately for us, we happened to hit it on a powder day. It snowed 6 inches Sunday night and then kept snowing all day Monday when we were skiing the hill, or maybe I should call it a mountain. After all, it is 4,735 feet of vertical. I skied almost 25,000 vertical feet on Monday and wasn't even hitting it that hard. That's like going heli skiing! Crazy. Here's one of France enjoying some powder on her 5th day ever snowboarding. She's doing great. She's wearing my jacket because her zipper broke in the morning.



In the car. My head looking 3 times bigger than France's.


France on a sunny day in Valemount.


The sucky view from Valemount.


The view over Slocan Lake, about 45 minutes from Nelson.

Winter Is Back

Winter is finally back. Last night it snowed about 5 inches with moderately strong southwest winds so we had to get out and hit some real powder. Tim, Steve, Trevor, and I headed up with the intent of skiing some lines off the backside of White Queen into Five Mile Basin. White Queen has a nice north facing bowl that offers a fantastic 800 foot run into Five Mile Basin. We took a few laps on this and then skied another north facing pillow field that we noticed initially on our way to the summit of the Queen. The powder was especially delicious since we'd all felt a little powder starved for the last two weeks. The powder was boot deep, some places deeper, and nice, cold, and dry. Love that coldsmoke. To get back to the car we decided to ski a line off the south face of White Queen that none of us had skied before. We had a long 2000 foot run back down to the road, but the powder wasn't deep enough to keep us from hitting the nasty melt-freeze crust formed over the past two weeks. All in all a good day in the mountains with good friends.

Steve enjoying winter again on our first run.



Joshua in the pillow field.



Steve on the lower half of the first run.



Tim hitting one of the pillows.



Trevor's turn.



Steve hitting three pillows in a row.


Joshua, Tim, and a random dude on the summit of White Queen.

West Ymir Bowl

My friend Jen and I headed up to the hill today with plans of skiing off of Ymir Peak. It snowed a tiny bit last night, 2 inches, but any snow was better than no snow after a week and a half of dry, spring like conditions. Fortunately the wind had picked up a bit and moved the snow around making it more like 4 inches on the north facing aspects. We couldn't see Ymir Peak when we got to the parking lot, but we could see some patches of blue sky and thought that it might break later on. So we headed up. When we got to the saddle between Prospector Peak and Ymir, we made the decision to drop into west Ymir bowl since the visibility was poo up on the peak. Two guys had hit West Ymir a few minutes before us, so other than those two lines, a blank canvas of snow was all ours. We had a nice 1600 foot run down the main bowl and back to the ski hill. It wasn't deep, but it was great to be back on some semblance of powder again. After a bite to eat we thought we'd take another lap, this time heading out a little farther into the bowl and skiing a steeper variation. This second run was fantastic with great, wide open turns down the middle of the bowl. We heard from some guys that we ran into that Five Mile basin had deeper snow so we ran over for a quick lap down the steep trees and into the bottom of the main bowl. The run was fantastic coldsmoke powder, 6 inches deep. Definitely the best snow of the day and the last week and a half.

View from the top of our first run

Jen in the lower half of the bowl

The view from our second lap

Joshua mid turn on the second run

Kootenay Coldsmoke Festival

I took part in the Kootenay Coldsmoke Festival this weekend up at Whitewater, our local ski hill. It's a festival that celebrates the backcountry and offers clinics, demos, and some races all focused on ski touring/backcountry skiing. I wanted to fly up from California last year and attend, but it just wasn't realistic. So, living in Nelson this year I had to attend. I only made it up on Sunday but took a clinic focused on navigation, route finding, and safe travel techniques in the backcountry. I was pleasantly suprised when I arrived to learn that Greg Hill was my instructor for the course. He is one of my hero's in the backcountry skiing world and is an endurance machine on skis. Map use was the primary tool of the day and we were rewarded with two fantastic descents during the course. The first was in West Ymir Bowl and the second, and best, was down a broad alpine bowl and some nice avalanche paths in Five Mile Basin. The photo below shows Mr. Hill shredding halfway down our run in Five Mile.

In search of something soft

Headed up to Kootenay Pass today with Tim and Steve in search of some soft snow. Spring like warming, no clouds, intense solar radiation, and no snow have all contributed to a general suckiness towards ski conditions. A little extra effort was indeed needed to find the goods. With tree bombs destroying any lines in the trees and intense solar radiation turning anything south facing into refrozen junk, we opted for open north facing lines to find some softer snow. Initially we saw several groups at the parking lot, but as soon as we started skinning up we didn't see anyone for the rest of the day. A real treat for Cornice Ridge on a Saturday. Heading up Cornice Ridge we dropped into some nice steep north facing lines off its backside. A couple of laps on the open north face and we hopped into the main bowl on Cornice Ridge to get back to the highway. Conditions on this south facing slope were surpisingly soft up top but then breakable crust after about 150 feet or so. Hoping to find something better we traversed the bowl until finding some nice snow on some northeast facing steeps and then skied out back to the highway and the car. All in all, a great day in the backcountry with some new terrain explored.

A Collage of Photos

So I've been a slacker. Who was I kidding thinking that I'd be good at blogging. I'd rather be out skiing than writing and posting photos. But this is a good forum for me to share photos and a few words with friends and family so here is my attempt to throw some photos and context together for a visual overview of some of my adventures over the past few months. There are many more to come, but I should fill you in before too long. I'll start from the most recent and go backwards. Enjoy.

Skied some great lines off of Evening Ridge near Whitewater, the local ski hill.