3 Decker laps

Daily Vert: 1550m

Total Vert so far: 40,950m

Now that I have Mondays off work from the Spag, I was able to get out on an nice and local full day tour.  Things started out pretty slowly- a problem with a grooming machine was leading to a long delay with the opening of the Showcase T-bar.  After sitting in Glacier Creek for a while, then sitting in Horstman Hut for another while, we eventually learned that it was permissible to hike over Horstman Peak to come out above the Windlip, so that was what we did.  The glacier itself was completely tracked, which was pretty ridiculous considering that the T-bar hadn't been open the day before, and there were quite a few people ahead of us on the skin track up to the Spearhead col.  Lots of them seemed to be heading to either DOA or Corona, so we got a nice quiet run down to Circle Lake.  From here there were a couple of groups ahead of us taking various routes up Decker, and we boshed up to the col just below the summit in short order.  From here we skied lookers left on the Decker Glacier all the way back to the flats at the bottom.  This was a sweet run with a good pitch and very nice snow.  Next we skinned up to the shoulder and sketched our way over to the Chisel Couloir.  The entrance was even more sketchy than usual and the platform where you can usually stand at the top of the chute was far more sloped than normal.  But we made it in OK and the snow within the couloir was amazing.

Finally we took the long skin all the way back to Decker and skied the 9th Hole and then back inbounds.  Another great day with plenty of sweet skiing.

Standard shot of Fissile from near the summit of Decker

Looking down the Chisel... sweeeeet....

Steve skins back under the Cham Chutes

Tremor in the distance and some nice lines on Pattison

Admiring the view of Blacktusk as the sun goes down

Flute with Ski School

Daily Vert: 150m

Total Vert so far: 39,400m

On Sunday I hiked the regular route up Flute with my ski school group.  It took them about half an hour, but I guess thats not bad considering most of them are only 11.  The traffic up Flute was completely ridiculous. I've never really seen anything like it... there must have been hundreds of people on the up track at any given time, and by the time we got up there at about 2pm there were no fresh lines to be had anywhere.  But its still a nice walk!

Chief Pascal

Daily Vert: 1400m

Total Vert so far: 39,250m

The mellow and accessible slopes of Chief Pascal make an excellent Duffy destination when the avi danger is high, so that is where we went today.  We parked at the Cayoosh parking lot, and after skinning along the south side road and up through the clear cut, we were near the summit and ready to ski after two and a half hours.  For our first run we hit the straight line chute just below the sub peak.  I'd looked at it from above on a previous trip and deemed it pretty gnarly, but on a second look it didn't look to bad... not very long at any rate, and the snow way excellent so we decided to go for it.  The chute isn't a steep as it looks, and with the excellent duffy pow we were able to dump speed quickly on the mellow run out. Definitely a fun way to start the day.

Runar and his DPS Wailers look down the straight line...

Steve at the bottom, stoked that we all nailed it.

After skiing a little further down the bowl we skinned back around the ridge and it was a quick trip up for a second lap.  The snow seemed stable, there hadn't been any signs of instability such as cracking, whoomphing or tree bombs, so we considered heading over to the steeper slopes on skiers right below the big cliffs for our final run.  A very short roll over of a slightly steeper pitch gave us an opportunity to test the stability a little more before committing to the longer slopes, but after this result we re-assesed our plans!

After that wake up call we kept it super mellow for our final lap and then skied back out to the car. The only drawback of this route is the 30 minute skin along the flat to get back to the car, but its a small price to pay for the fun and happy pow on Cheif Pascal!

Steep Creek

Daily Vert: 1400m

Total Vert so far: 37,850m

Despite the storm on Friday we decided to return to Steep Creek.  The avalanche conditions were extremely unstable, so we had to stick to very low angle runs, but photographer Vince still managed to bag these sweet shots.

Flute Laps

Daily Vert: 1100m

Total Vert so far: 36,450m

On a non-descript day at the end of February I met up with Claire and Janet for a few laps close to home.  I did one solo lap on the front of Flute, then after meeting up with the girls we did 2 laps on the back of Flute, one on the front of Oboe, and then skied back inbounds over Lesser Flute.  Fun Mellow pow all day.

Wedge NW Couloir

Daily Vert: 1900m

Total Vert so far: 35,350m

Woohoo!  On my third attempt I finally managed to Summit Wedge and ski the Wedge NW couloir.  Here is how it played out.

After a sneaky early upload with Blackcomb Ski Patrol we were at the gate and on our way at 8am.  If you work BSP and are reading this, thanks very much!  

We quickly climbed Dean's, and after a quick assessment of the route from the Spearhead col we skied down the Spearhead and into Wedge Pass.

After a quick sketchy creek crossing we were on our way up the south face.

The south face contains some hefty terrain traps and avi paths, but it is possible to stay on little ribs and ridges so that you stay out of them.

The South Face is massive and takes ages to cross.  It's so big you can barely spot Holly in this picture. Its actually a little bit ugly too... not you're usual picturesque mountain terrain.  Just a big ugly planar slope.  Crossing the south face here is probably the only bit I would do differently if I ever attempt this route again.  Once you reach treeline it is tempting to keep ascending as you cross the face.  It seems that this isn't the best way to do it thou, as eventually the face gets too steep to skin, even with ski crampons, and you end up having to boot pack in a diagonal in order to access the correct gully for climbing.  Instead of continuing to climb after getting above the tree line look for a very subtle bench that goes right across the south face.  You wont gain as much elevation but the skinning will be quick and easy, and then you can cross all the way over to one of the easy gullies on the lookers left.

After it got too steep to skin we switched over to our new Billy Goat Technologies Alpine Ascent Plates.  This was my first time using these and they certainly made boot packing through the facetted and variable snow much easier.

Holly on the ascent.  The worst thing about this bootpack is not just that it is so long, but also it is kind of boring!

View of Weart from the top

I was fucking stoked to reach the top.  I made the summit ridge at about 3pm, which was five and a half hours after starting the climb from Wedge Pass, breaking trail the whole way.

Stoked and ready to ski

The snow within the couloir was actually pretty disappointing, it was heavily wind affected.  But I didn't mind too much.  The line itself is super cool... really long, steep and aesthetic, and you can't always expect to ski the big lines in good snow.

Stoked at the bottom, but it's still a long way back to the car!

We decided to ski down the Rethel Creek drainage rather than cross over to the glacier side.  The sub alpine basin here is very nice, much prettier than the South Face.  This route probably would have been ok, but quite near the bottom we missed the logging road and spend about an hour in the creek longer than necessary.  But we made it, and I'm stoked to finally bag the biggest peak around!

Russet Laps

Daily Vert: 1350m

Total Vert so far: 33,450m

On an overcast day Runar and I decided to do some more exploring in a heavily skied area.  We took the quick route out to Cowboy Ridge and then skied 3 laps near by.  The first was in the steep bowl to lookers right of Cowboy Ridge. This was the only thing we skied all day that didn't have tracks in it already.  The bowl is steep and well protected, and has plenty of cool cliff features, unfortunately the laps are a little short- only around 100 vertical meters.  Could be an interesting way to add a bit of colour to touring in this familiar area thou.  We then headed over to Russet Ridge and skied one of the couloirs off the main finger, and then the gladed bowl below.  This bowl had a disappointingly large number of tracks in it. Despite this we still did 2 laps in the bowl, then headed back up for the standard run down cowboy, and were back in crystal for wings by 3.30.   Fun day.

Runar heads home off Cowboy.

Russet Laps GPS track

Elevation profile.  Lots of mini laps today.