Cham Chutes and Finger Chutes, Dec 30th

Daily Vert: 750m

Total Vert So Far: 15,015m

After a successful pre-nightshift at work tour yesterday, we decided to do the same again today.  Nothing to ambitious (in terms of length), just one lap of Decker, hopefully via the Finger Chutes.  I've To get to Decker this time we went via the Cham Chutes.  For my money the most over rated lines in the Blackcomb backcountry.  Consistently rocky, no flow to speak of, and always, always rancid snow.    But this trip served to reinforce my opinion, and I'll be making an effort not to ski them again for the rest of the season.  We powered up Decker and popped over the cornice just 36 minutes after leaving the toe of the Glacier.  After a quick snack we headed over to the Finger Chutes.  I have skied this line once before, about 3 years ago, and I remembered it as being the steepest, scariest, and most exposed line I had ever skied.  Since then I have bagged quite a few other exposed descents, including Hourglass on Tremor, the North Face of Fitzsimmons, as well as Summit Chute and the North East Face of Fissile.  I was hoping that with my additional experience the Finger Chutes wouldn't seem quite such an undertaking.  I was wrong.  Despite 3 years of additional experience, the Fingers are still the steepest, scariest, and most exposed line I have skied.  I suppose Summit chute on Fissile comes close, as it is equally steep and much much longer, but none of the other lines even get a look in.  Previously I had skied the middle finger, which is more open but with more consistent exposure, and today we decided to ski the line on skiers right, which is narrower, but slightly less exposed once you are in.

Benoit went first and snowboarded down smoothly and calmly.  I went next and made far to many hop turns for my own good, essentially skiing it one turn at a time in order to prevent the accumulation of any sluff.  I doubt any onlookers would have been mightily impressed with my conservative approach, but I made it down safely and without incident. Another great day in the bag!

 Looking down the middle finger

 Clearly not my photo.... Found this on the TGR forums a couple of years ago and it really highlights the exposer.  If you know who took this photo feel free to let me know.  Who ever you are, props on a sick shot.  The tracks in this photo are down middle finger, today we skied the line on lookers left of this shot.

Finger Chutes GPS track

Finger Chutes Elevation Profile.

Chisel Couloir and 9th Hole Dec 29th

Daily Vert: 1050m

Total Vert So Far: 14,265m

The Chisel Couloir is one of Blackcomb's hidden gems.  Arguably its only remaining hidden gem.  Despite being located on the shoulder of Decker mountain, and regardless of the fact you can be standing on top of it about one hour after leaving the Blackcomb gate, this beautiful line sees surprisingly little traffic.  The mostly likely reason for this is that you can't see the line from any of the standard commuter routes in the area.  You can't see it from the Spearhead Col or from anywhere on the standard routes between Decker and Trorey.  Some people like to keep it secret, so if you want to ski it you'll have to find it yourself!  Anyway, enough geography... we skied the line today and it was quite lovely, I thoroughly recommend it.  After reaching the bottom we skinned all the way back to the top of Decker and skied the 9th hole, which also held excellent snow.  A great way for Benoit and I to spend the morning before heading to work at the Spag all night!

Total Zoo at the Blackcomb gate

Just over an hour later we find solitude and look down this steep line

The chisel from below (older photo)

Enjoying the views in Decker Meadows as the sun comes out.

Sproat Dec 28th

Daily Vert: 1500m
Total so far: 13,215m

Although not very high, Sproat is one of the most noticeable summits from Whistler village, mostly because aside from Whistler and Blackcomb is the geographically the closest.  Most of the limited reports I had heard about skiing touring on Sproat highlighted 2 main characteristics.  1) it is crawling with snowmobiles, and 2) the runs are short and flat and there is a total lack of gnar.  All of these assumptions proved to be quite wrong, and after a very enjoyable trip I will certainly be returning to Sproat again.

For the ascent we took the shorter, steeper of the two recognised routes, up the North East ridge.  The then swung around the summit to the east and approached with spectacular views of the ski resort.  We skied 2 laps on the north west flank, and spied a lot of far gnarlier terrain on the opposing face of Tonic peak.  We didn't see any sledders (although we saw lots of old tracks and did hear one at one point) and we ended the day by skiing out the creek between Sproat and Tonic, which was relatively quick and painless.

Cayoosh Dec 27th

Daily vert: 1450m

Total so far: 11,715m

Cayoosh... A Duffy classic that has long eluded me.  It popped into my head as a possibility the night before, but the weather was longing slightly uncertain.  We decided to drive up there anyway, and if it was looking too cloudy plan B was to ski Chief Pascal instead.  The sky wasn't looking too bad when we pulled into the parking lot, so we decided to go for it.  It was pretty cloudy for most of the morning, but just before we reached the saddle between the East and North Glaciers we were treated to a full blue sky.  It wasn't to last however and as we attempted to skin up the steep face guarding the summit we quickly became socked it.  We decided to cut our losses about 20m below the summit ridge, and began to descend the North glacier.  Unfortunately we underestimated the number of crevasses on this route, and before long had to retrace our steps as we encountered a very large complex, the visability was poor and we had no rope.  So we climbed back to the initial saddle and enjoyed the 1000m run back down the East glacier.

DOA, Dec 25th

Daily vert: 200m

Total so far: 10,265m

A casual afternoon stroll with Urpens to DOA before work on Xmas day.  The snow was rubbish, but DOA is always a nice line to ski, it just looks so cool!

Musical Bumps Dec 21st

Daily vert: 1200m

Total so far: 10,065m

One of my favourite routes for a snowy day is taking the longer route over the musical bumps (not the shorter, flatter way you would go if rushing out to Fissile) and also taking in the slighter steeper chutes on Russet Ridge.  On this day the snow was considerably deeper than expected, although luckily it was surprisingly light, so we were still able to mince out some turns even thou the terrain isn't the steepest around.  We did however have to break trail for the entire day, and the ski pen was around 30-40cm, so travel was not the quickest.  This was especially noticeable when skinning back up to Cowboy Ridge from the bottom of Russet Ridge, when the ski pen was closer to 50cm.  The slow travel meant that we didn't get back on top of Cowboy until around 4pm, which was a little later than planned seeing as it was the shortest day of the year... and to make matters worse, to our dismay we discovered that singing pass had not been trail broken.  This was quite worrying, and our heads were filled with thoughts of a long and cold night in a snow cave as we slowly traipsed through the snow on the lower flanks of Oboe in the quickly fading light.  To our eternal glee, after about an hour we eventually found other tracks somewhere in between the start of the trail and Oboe creek.  Without headlamps (Rookie mistake) we made slow progress down the trail, but there was a bright moon and the trail become wider and wider and we got closer to the resort.  Definitely worth it for all the deep pow!

 

Husume, December 9th

Daily vert: 500m

Total so far: 8,865m

Ahh... a quick morning tour to Husume... thats a good idea...  well, it was a good idea, but it turned out to be not so quick.  First of all the Showcase T-bar wasn't open, so to make sure we were making lemonade we did a little experiment- is it quicker to skin straight up the Showcase line, or to ride Horstman and then traverse over?  Turns out its about the same.  Although I then had to traverse from the Blowhole to the Blackcomb Gate with my skins on... which was very time consuming and annoying.  After that little delay we headed up to the Spearhead Col, but the weather was quickly deteriorating.  There were a few groups at the top, all of whom had more ambitious plans at the start of the day, but most groups were redirecting to Husume given the weather.  After skiing down Don't swill, which was pleasantly rock free, we noticed two blokes attempting to boot pack back up one of the other Don't Swill chutes.  The explained that they had noticed crevasses on either side of them, and thought it was likely that the crevasse carried on in front, but the light was so bad it was impossible to see it, so they decided to go back up.  Unfortunately they were having a nightmare of a time climbing back up, so we stood for a minute and considered our options.  By this time several groups had bunched up together, and one dude said that he had a rope.  We threw the rope down hill and lay it in the snow to help identify if there were any sudden changes in pitch.  There wasn't, so hoping that any snow bridges would support our weight we followed the rope down the hill.  This method worked quite well and it re-enforced the importance of having a rope in times of poor visibility, especially on a glacier.  There was now about 15 of us heading to Husume, and the two guys who had been trying to climb back up Don't Swill set the final boot pack.  The pace at which they did so compared with their speed up Don't Swill suggested that climbing back out of the Spearhead would have posed many many difficulties.  We all sat around for a bit at the top and let the guy who had the rope go first- not that it really mattered- the snow was totally wind fucked!

Vantage Ridge, Dec 8th

Daily vert: 1250

Total so far: 8365

The weather and snow conditions were looking great, so a relatively large group of Jon, Claire, Rob, Janet and myself decided to head up to the Duffy and score some pow close to the highway.  The day didn't get off to the best start- Claire overslept and was almost an hour late, and Jon forgot his transceiver and was unable to find another at such an early hour in Pemby.  Quickly forging a plan B, Jon drove my car back home, and I carried on with Claire, Rob and Janet to the Cerise Creek parking.

We headed up Vantage Ridge to the run called South Side (even thou it faces north) and were pleased to find the trail had be broken the whole way to the ridge line.  A quick compression test gave 2 results of CTN, which was very encouraging.  The girls took a break for lunch while Rob and I skied the sublime pow on South Side, then after skinning back up we carried on to Cheques in the Mail.  The top of this run was equally fantastic, although there was a little bit of bush whacking to get back to the road lower down.  The only drawback of this line compared to some of my Duffy favourites is the fairly long skate along the road to get back to the car, but the long runs of pow certainly made it worth while.

Lesser Flute Dec 5th

Daily vert: 400

Total so far: 7115

On December 5th we rode Harmony chair and skied Harvey's, then crossed Burnt Stew and skied all the way to the bottom of Symphony.  Here we chatted for a while with a dude from Lift Maintenance who had got his sled stuck in the deep pow at the bottom of the lift, the skinned up Encore Ridge to Lesser Flute.  The weather was coming in and I had to get to work, so we skipped the planned lap on the 3 Sisters and skied back down the front to Symphony, then skinned up the exit road.  Nice walk, mellow skiing.