Little House in the Boonies

I thought I'd throw up a few pics of the new place in Alberta for the summer. Also a few pics of Rufus! France and I are fostering a puppy with the potential to adopt him. He's darn cute. He's a yellow lab/golden retriever mix, with a little bit of husky too. We're having a great time with him. He sure likes to sleep a lot though!

La casita with the fire tower behind. I have to put on my harness and climb up there to work and make phone calls since that's the only place we get enough reception.



Rufus in his snow patch (it's melted now).



A view of the flat, endless forest from the tower.



Rufus snuggling with his Tiger.



Our potable water storage.



Generator on the left, storage shed on the right.



Solar Showers baby!



France's Garden.



El Bano.



Our Horseshoe and Bocce Ball Court



The shower. It can get a bit breezy!


La cocina.

Transitions

It's been a little bit since I last blogged, but there has been quite a bit going on. France and I moved out of Nelson, which has been a whirlwind of not so much fun since we both love the place. However, reality sometimes dictates life and the reality is that with no Canadian Work Visa and with France not being able to find helicopter work for the summer, it is, sadly, time to cast the net in other waters. So, we've plunked down in northern Alberta for the summer, an odd place for me, where France can make some money and we can get free rent. After that we'll be headed down to the States, probably Washington, so France can get her helicopter instructor's license. Meanwhile, she's saving for that program by working as a fire tower attendant in the boonies of AB (Alberta).

However, lets back track a little. Once I got everything in storage, moved out, and packed out in Nelson, I had to make a trip down to Washington state to get some warranty work done on my Honda. As I haven't really done any rock climbing outside since December when I was back visiting family in California, I thought it would be fun to get out and do some climbing in Washington. My friend Jen from Colorado, who is now studying in Vancouver, drove down to meet for two days of climbing. We climbed the first day at Frenchman's Coulee and then the next day in the rocktropolis of Leavenworth. Both places were great, but Leavenworth was incredible. There is so much rock it's crazy. However, because of the vast amount of rock, it's also a little challenging to find some of the routes and we ended spending most of our day in Leavenworth hiking around, trying to find routes, and then getting lost, oh, and then it started raining. Needless to say we didn't get a lot of climbing done in Leavenworth, but the climbs we did do were fantastic, especially Classic Crack. A fantastic splitter. Just what I wanted!

A view of perfect Mount Rainier from the road near Vantage, Washington.



A view of the Feathers at Frenchman's Coulee where we climbed for the first morning of our two day climbing trip.



Jen at the top of the second climb warm up climb we did.



Jen preparing to rappel.




A lovely view from around Leavenworth.



A fun 5.8 crack we climbed at Leavenworth.



Me at the base of Classic Crack after leading it.



Classic Crack. The gorgeous 5.9 handcrack in the center.

Videos from Evening Ridge Trees

Here's a few of the videos we took from Friday's tree skiing at Evening Ridge.

Westies

Yesterday was one of those perfect days in the mountains. Steve, Tim, and I headed up for a last tour before I move out of Nelson. The morning dawned completely clear, the sky that deep, rich blue that is so beautifully amplified by the contrasting snow draped mountains. We got an early start because the freezing levels were supposed to sky rocket to 2500 meters by the afternoon, but we skinned up in perfect 20 degree (-6 Celsius) weather. The glide of our skis made the refrozen snow crunch lightly underneath our feet.





Our plan for the day was to ski a line in Prospector's Bowl. Tim had never been there so we thought we'd let him taste what he'd been missing all season. However, when we arrived at the top of the chute to enter the bowl, it was obvious that today was not the day for it. The winds, which normally come from the southwest, had come from the northwest and had scoured and distorted the normally beautiful entrance. It looked like an avalanche waiting to happen, or at best, terrible skiing. Only 10 minutes away from the entrance to West Ymir, we decided it was best to look over there. When we got to the saddle we looked into the bowl and it looked perfect. The sun was just beginning to touch the North facing slope fueling our desire to sky it even more. There were 2 tracks in the bowl from some people who had skied a different line, but there didn't appear to be any movement within the snow. We quickly deskinned and dropped in. The snow was perfect. Hero snow. The winds that had scoured Prospector's had actually helped pull the moisture out of the snow, which was so heavy yesterday, making for effortless turns. I don't think I stopped smiling until hours after we were finished. Oh wait, I feel a grin coming on. This was definitely one of the most memorable times that I've skied West Ymir. Great visibility, great snow, and great friends. A perfect day.

Tim





Joshua





Steve

Evening Ridge Trees

This has been a funny month in the Kootenays. April hasn't quite decided if it's going to be winter or spring yet. One day it'll be sunny, hot and 70 degrees (20 Celsius) in Nelson, and the next day or two it will be snowing. The last couple days have been raining in town, but snowing up in the mountains. Never ones to say no to April powder, Steve and I had plans of doing a tour somewhere up in Ymir Bowl. However, the snow we hoped to ski also thwarted us a bit.

I took the winter tires off of my car about 3 weeks ago, because, well, its supposed to be spring. But that act made it a little challenging to get up to Whitewater today as they hadn't plowed the road and I just couldn't make it up the final hill to the parking lot. So, we reassessed and decided to ski over at Evening Ridge since we'd already passed the parking lot. We found about 6 inches in the parking lot and it only got deeper the higher we got. However, we also new that all of this snow, which was of the high density variety, was sitting on top of a thick crust and could slide easily if we weren't careful. So we opted to play it safe, do some exploring and check out a treed line that we'd never skied. Our ascent and descent line is in red.



Skinning up through beautifully spaced trees, we knew that the run down would be great.



The snow kept getting deeper the higher we got. There was up to 16 inches sitting on top of the crust and 12 of those inches were from the last few days. Can you believe this is April 25th?



We had a blast playing in the trees on the way down. Joshua enjoying the late April pow.



Steve going big.



More pillow fun.



I have a couple of videos from today, but they're having some problems uploading. I'll try and see if I can add them later, otherwise I'll put them in a new post.

The Whale's Back

I finally got the chance to ski a line that I've had my eye on ever since I first visited Whitewater: The Whale's Back. It's a fantastic line that takes you into some big avalanche terrain. The Whale's Back is actually a broad ridge between two gigantic avalanche start zones. It's a line off of Evening Ridge and offers a fantastic 2000 foot descent. Our ski line down in red.



Normally when I skin up to Evening Ridge, I've taken a path up through steep trees to gain the ridge line. However, today I thought we'd try and go through Hummingbird Pass because I'd heard it was faster. Well, it's not. The only thing it does is put you into a big terrain trap with lots of start zones above you and bad consequences if anything went wrong. We passed through today without problem, but I wouldn't go through there again. Steve in Hummingbird Pass.



A storm came through on Friday and Saturday and ended up leaving about 7 inches of new, wintery snow. On the way up the snow was very cold, dry and light, so there wasn't alot of concern about it turning into a slab because the sun wasn't out yet. Steve, Trevor, and I were all looking forward to light powder turns down this amazing line. However, about 20 minutes away from the top of our line, the sun decided to come out and it started baking our line. What we thought would be light powder started out a little heavy and got progressively heavier the lower we went. Steve, Joshua, and Trevor enjoying the heavy, but late season, powder.







Here's a little video of Steve on the lower half of the Whale's Back.



The sun's transformative power became quickly apparent to me the more we descended. The snow turned into heavy glop down low. I should have made myself pause a bit more before jumping into this line, having felt what I felt with the snow.



The sun had set the new snow up into a heavy slab and last weekends sun crust provided the perfect sliding layer. I ended up triggering a class 2 avalanche that fortunately I was able to get out of the way of, thanks to Steve yelling "Avalanche!" The slab broke about 30-40 feet wide and ran about 600 feet. Here I am with the avalanche starting to cut loose as I begin to get out of the way.



The start zone.



Looking down at the avi debris from half way down the slide path.



Looking back up. The crown and start zone are about 150-200 feet above this rollover.



Once I let everyone know that I was safe, Trevor began descending and inadvertently triggered another avalanche, class 1 to 1.5. I told Trevor to ski the bed surface of the path because he wasn't likely to trigger anything since it had already slid. The three of us skied down the path for a little bit before skiing mellow trees out and down to the bottom of the line.

Trev holding up some of the chunky debris.



Today was definitely an educational day. Honestly what impressed me the most was how much of a factor the sun can be, especially at this time of year where it sits high in the sky and the radiation effect is intense. The sun had really only been out for about 20-30 minutes before we dropped in, but that had been enough to turn cold, dry, blower snow into a dense, heavy, wet slab. It's always good to be able to learn these lessons and come home and write about them. Today was a good reminder to get even earlier starts this time of year and to never underestimate the power of the sun.

Osoyoos

France and I spent Sunday and Monday in the quiet desert town of Osoyoos, only a few miles from the US border. When I first came up to visit France a few years ago she was living here. We thought it would be fun to come back out and visit. We met up with a few of France's old friends and ate a lot of good food!