July 2012

For most people, June is not a month for skiing.  Once Blackcomb closed it's lifts at the end of May the majority of my friends were more than happy to hang up their skis and take out their bikes.  My obsession with skiing wasn't so easily quashed by a few weeks of sunshine thou, and I was confident that one last mission was still possible.  This time the local daddy- Wedge.  After a few weeks of waiting for a nice sunny window to align itself with my days off, we set off on a 2 day Wedge mission on the 6th of July.

 Approaching the Wedge hut around sunset.

Nick points out tomorrows objective.

After a 4am start we made good time up the Glacier.  This is the point where it all went wrong thou.  We could see that the NE Arete was already getting baked in sunshine, so considered booting straight up the NW couloir, which was the route we were planning to ski.  After a brief discussion we all agreed that climbing the arete and skiing the couloir would make a nicer circular route, and at around 2900m we were hopeful that the arete would remain frozen once we got there. 

About 5 minutes before turning around- so close to the top!  Once we crossed onto the more easterly aspect for the final push to the summit the snow turned to total schmoo.  We went from front pointing on our crampons to sinking up to our knees in just a few steps.  Being caught in a wet slide on that final face would not be pretty at all, so we cut our losses and turned around.  This was the first time I had turned around to close to a summit and I was pretty disappointed,  but my friends reminded me that in order to stay safe it is important to be comfortable with turning around, no matter how close you are to the top, and besides, the mountain will still be here next year!

So down we went.  And after a little nap and some sunbathing around the lake we enjoyed a few more summer turns before the long slog back down to the car.