Red Heather, November 21st

Daily vert: 750

Total so far: 3550

Whistler Mountain has been open all week, and after a few days of lift assisted turning it was time to try and rack up some more vert. I decided that the Diamond Head/Elfin Lakes area would be a good objective, as it's fairly mellow, easy to access and I'd heard it is fills in quickly early on in the season. We left Whistler at around 8am, and after stopping to put snow chains on about half way up the Elfin Lakes road, we parked the car about 2km from the parking lot at around 9.30. As is often the way things didn't quite work out as we had planned! There was a LOT of unconsolidated snow which must have fallen over the past few days. Ski penetration on the Elfin Lakes trail was around 30cm. Once we made it to the tree line ski penetration was closer to 45cm. Foot penetration was over a meter! Needless to say travel was painfully slow and tiring! I had to be back in Whistler for work at 6pm, so at around 1.30 we decided to call it. The original objective of skiing Columnar Peak close to Elfin Lakes hut had gone out the window not long after we left the car. The secondary objective of skiing some lines of Paul Ridge was also now abandoned. We tried to make some turns on the frontside of Round Mountain about Red Heather shelter, but it was too deep and not nearly steep enough- we could hardly get moving at all! We skied back down our up track to the hut to finish off our food and then skied down the road to the car. On the way out we met at least 15 people heading up, none of whom seemed to have any idea how how lucky they were not to be breaking trail! There was a few groups of skiers with similar plans to us (but a bit more time), several out of shape snowshoers, and even a group of snowboarders boot packing! The most important thing I learnt from this trip is not to jump on this route right after a fresh snowfall. Even thou the road hadn't been plowed, by the time we got back to the car all the other vehicles had made the road far more drivable, and all the heavy trail breaking slowed us down by close to a factor of two. I'm not going to upload the GPS track or elevation profile from this trip as it is too pathetic, but it was another 700m of vert towards my lofty target!

Rethel Couloir. November 15th

Daily vert: 1700

Total so far: 2800

After last weeks semi successful trip to Cerise Creek we decided to try again... this time a little closer to home. I had heard from several noted sources (or read it on their blogs) that the Rethel Couloir can be a good objective early in the season. The thinking goes that the line holds snow all year, it's pretty high up and north facing so fills in early, plus the Wedgemont trail is actually easier earlier or later in the season when there is less snow.

At least so goes the theory. My ambitious agenda was for 3 hours to the base of the couloir, 2 hours up the couloir, 1 hour for lunch plus skiing, and 3 hours back down, for a total of 9 hours. Turns out I was a little off. It actually took us 3.5 hours to do the approach, 3.5 hours to get up (culminating in possibly the most consistently arduous 7 hours of my life) 1 hour for lunch and skiing, and 4 hours back down, making it closer to 12 hours in total. The walk back down the Wedge summer trail in the dark with frozen and slippery soil is not something I would wish upon anyone!

All in all this was another great day with around 1700m elevation gain, all of it boot packing. The only thing I would advise anyone else trying this route is don't try to cut a corner by heading straight to the bottom of the chute without going via the Wedge Hut. We attempted this on both the up and down and it wasn't worth it. It would have been much quicker to stay on the well worn summer trail, even thou it does take you a little out of your way.

Looking down the Rethel Couloir

Nov 8th. 1st Trip of the season.

Daily vert: 1100
Total so far: 1100

It has begun!  After months of preparation (well not really) today I finally managed to get some skiing orientated elevation gain under my belt.  A week of solid rain in Whistler ended with a sudden cold snap, and rumour had it that the Duffy had received in excess of 20cm.  The Anniversary Glacier in Cerise Creek seemed like a good spot for and early season mission, so at 6.30am on Thursday November 8th I picked Benoit up from his house in Brio and off we went.

There was a thin coating of snow on the summer trail right from the highway, but we stayed in our hiking shoes and made it to Keith's hut in around 2h15m.

The plan was to ski one or two laps on the glacier it's self, and after a short rest break at the cabin we headed up onto the shoulder towards Motel 66.  At around 2000m elevation, where we planned to ski onto the glacier, we noticed that the more north westerly aspects, heading back into the creek below Central Couloir etc looked to be well filled in, so we skied a short lap down there.  The fresh snow was quite deep and extremely light for these parts, but there was barely any base to speak off.

We then rejoined our skin track and headed back onto the glacier as originally planned.  This was slightly more disappointing-  The fresh snow was not quite as deep on this side, and the glacier was covered in huge chunks of old and frozen avalanche debris.  However we still managed to get a few enjoyable turns.

A slight error of judgement at this point found us trying to traverse back to the hut directly, which resulted in us cutting out a large portion of the glacier in order to slowly pick our way over barely covered moraines and bushes.  The better option would have been to ski the glacier all the way to the little lake at the bottom, and then boot pack back over the moraines to the cabin as you would do in summer.  Oh well.  We'll know for next time.

After another brief rest at the cabin we began the long slog back to the car.  We kept our boots on this time and (unsuccessfully) experimented with skiing every so often, but it ended up being better to walk.
The last 20 minutes saw us plodding along the last stretch of trail in the pitch dark, but about 2h30m after leaving the cabin we were safely back at the car, with 1090m of elevation gain down, 98,910m to go!

Route map for Nov 8th trip.  This was my first time using my Suunto Ambit GPS watch on a trip and I'm still getting the hang of it.  I think I had it set to only take a GPS co-ordinate every 60 seconds instead of every 1 second, which results in a few funny shapes and lines on the track.

Elevation profile.

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.

May 2012

In May we finally got some Sunny weather, and I made the effort to bosh out three local classics- The Garibaldi Neve Traverse, and the Coleman Demming route on Mt Baker and the NW face of Mt Matier.

The Neve traverse (often done as a multi day trip) took us about 12 hours car to car.  We were able to skin right from the parking lot at the Elfin Lakes end, but had to walk about 3km on dirt down the Rubble creek trail.

Sorry for the crappiness of these photos. I took them using my iPhone and I don't think it could handle how bright it was.

Vince skins past Diamond Head onto the Neve

Enjoying the looooooong flat section to the East of Garibaldi.

About to enjoy 700m of nice glacier skiing down to the lake... then the arduous slog back to the car!

The following week I popped down to Mt Baker for a summit attempt, which had been high on my list ever since seeing it from the Mt Baker ski area on a nice sunny day back in February.

On this trip I was accompanied by Holly Walker, who was using this as a last training mission before heading off on a 5 week Denali expedition.  This Trip took us about 12 hours car to car.  We were lucky enough to summit with clear skies, but we got socked in quickly and the entire descent was in a white out.  To ski from the summit back to the trail head in good conditions must be a real treat- the skiing just goes on forever!

At the trailhead, about 7am.

Approaching the top of the Coleman Glacier... still a long way to go.

Holly climbs the Roman headwall- the last section before the summit.

On the top.  Luckily the clouds held out just long enough....

I was very excited to have bagged a few classics at the start of May, but with 2012's deep snowpack I thought there might still be time for one more trip.  Mt Matier has always been high on my hit list, and conditions were still looking ok for a late season mission.

Vince crosses a bridge near the parking lot.  Was hoping for a little more snow than this!

From Motel 66 above Keith's Hut, Lee points out the best way up the Anniversary glacier.

Vince and Lee bootpack to the summit.

Success!

Very stoked indeed.  This run really did not disappoint.  Our timing was perfect and we hit the steep face in glorious spring corn.

Lee skis past the Aussie couloir and heads towards Joffre Lakes.  The snow was more than acceptable most of the way down the Matier Glacier, although it did start to get a little wet and sloppy for the last few hundred meters above the lake.  We were able to skate across the upper 2 lakes and ended up boot packing out the last kilometre or so along the summer trail.

Great day. Now which way to Pony Burger?

April 2012

April 2012 turned out to be a lot snowier than we were expecting.  The sunny days we were hoping for in order to get after big peaks rarely materialised.  What we got instead was more pow!  Like this day in the Duffy on April 3rd.  The avi danger was quite high so we had to stick to the edges of smaller slopes, but as you can see it was seriously deep!

The Following week it was my Birthday (28, thanks for asking) so we treated ourselves to a heli drop on Rainbow.  The weather was quite variable all day- the peak was socked in at the start so we got dropped about 200m south of the summit.  We skied 2 laps on the North glacier, and then climbed over the shoulder to the east face to exit.  The snow on the North Aspects was really good... the east not so much.

March 2012

March should be an even better month than February, but for some reason that I can't recall it didn't work out like that, and March saw only 4 backcountry trips. Pitiful. What March did offer above and beyond February was snow quality, and all of the March trips had pow in abundance. Early in March Andy and I went to the Duffy and skied some lines of Rohr Ridge. The terrain is Ok and the access not too difficult, but somehow these lines just don't seem quite such good value compared to all the zones on the opposite side of the highway. Still fun thou.

Andy and Joffre in the Background

A possible line into Stellar Bowl

Looking back at Stellar Bowl

The next week Runar and I attempted to summit Metal Dome in the Callaghan.  Long story short we got completely lost, spent ages trying to skin up a bunch of gnarly pillows, and ended up turning around not long after breaking out of the tree line.  A good learning experience thou and we spied sweet terrain for a return visit.

The 3rd trip in March took us to Steep Creek, which was quite simply outstanding.  I need not write about it, just watch this video and believe me when I say we had a really awesome day.  Possibly my best days touring ever.... (so far...)

The final trip of March was a return visit to Metal Dome.  We still didn't take the best route to the summit so it took a little longer than it should have, but its still hard to shake the feeling the Callaghan trips are just that much less good value than Duffy trips, probably due to the lower starting elevation.  Still, this was another great day, and although Runar disagrees, I think I would still go back for another visit.