Brandywine

March 18th 2015

Ah Brandywine… Apparently a Sea to Sky touring classic a decade ago before the popularisation of sleds.  And its easy to see why. It's close to Whistler, the access is easy, and the terrain is, as Peter Griffin would say, Freakin' Sweet. I've actually skied here several times before, and I regularly visit the area in the summer too, it's a great zone.  Usually if I've skied something before I like to make sure the next time I ski it is in better conditions than previously.  The sky was a little milky on this day so we didn't get all time blue bird, but the snow had still softened up nicely in time for the descent.

8am March 18th 2015, and we drove all the way to the Brandywine Cabin.

We had to walk a short ways along the road on the dirt, but there was plenty of snow by the time we reached the meadows.

Long lens on Black Tusk

Vince skinning up the ridge with the Brew Range behind.

Vince and Link on the ridge with Mt Fee and Chocolate Bowl behind.

Pretty sure these are the spines that Abma and Douglas hit in the PBP movie Reasons.

The top 50m was socked in, but all 3 of us made it to the summit cairn.

I was surprised by the number of sled tracks up up the guts, but the snow had softened up nicely.

Its a long and interesting run back down.

Link back at the bottom. He had no trouble keeping up on either the up or down today.

A short stroll back along the road and we were back at the car in 5.5 hours round trip.

Mt Garibaldi

March 5th 2015

So unless you are have been living under a rock all season, or unless you don't have any interest in skiing at all, you will know that it has been a very low snow year this season in Whistler, particularly at low elevations.  The good news about this is that it has been allowing us to drive on dirt roads to access areas which are usually reserved for sledders.

Mt Garibaldi is one such area.  Vince and I first scoped the big north face up close when we did the Garibaldi Neve Traverse a few years ago.  I always remembered it but it was never high on my list of objectives.  But now that the low snowpack was making access quicker and easier it peaked my interest a little more.

We left Whistler about 6am, and were parked up just about the snow line at about 1200m and ready to skin before 8.

It took about 45 minutes to reach the huge snowmobile club cabins where you are treated to this sweet view of the objective.

In about 2 hours we reached Brohm Ridge, which has scenery for days. We spent a little while at this point on photography.

Rico had warned me from his experiences snowmobiling in the area that Brohm ridge is a huge feature and would take a long time to traverse. He wasn't wrong, and it took us over 2 hours to reach the bottom of the face from here.

Table Mountain, which apparently is constructed of totally shite rock and has only seen a handful of successful ascents.

Contemplating the route.  This the edge of the Provincial Park and Snowmobilers are not permitted past this point. FYI the large black feature here is NOT 'The Sharks Fin'

The terrain up here is huge, and getting anywhere takes much longer than you think!

We finally reached the bottom of the face after 4 and a half hours, and that was moving at a serious clip.  We took a break here, and by the time we fannied around with crampons etc we hit the summit in 6.5 hours.

View from the top is all time.

The Camel Toe and Super Couloirs.  Rarely skied.

Me and Steve on the Summit.  One of my favourite peaks.

Some random dude making a rapid ascent of Dalton Dome from the Elfin Lakes approach. He didn't' stick around long and skied back down the way he came.

Steve skis down the Warren Glacier.

The imposing North Cliffs

Looking for skiable lines on the front of Dalton Dome.

Steve has an eye for Trevor Hunt's lines on Atwell

The descent was pretty quick and we were back at the car 2 hours after leaving the summit, for a fast paced 9 hours round trip.

Warrior Couloir

Feb 20th 2015

Warrior Couloir- My Favorite half day trip off Blackcomb.

Thats right. My favourite half day route.  A big shout I know, and the planets do have to be in alignment; The Warrior doesn't face north so getting good snow can be a bit tricky at some times of the year, but if you bag it when its good its a real winner.  Steep. Interesting. All time aesthetic. Good thing that not too many people read my blog so I'm not giving the secret away… haha.

The route is easy and doesn't need much explanation, so just photos from here.

View of Blackcomb the day before. Not very inspiring.

Wedge never fails to look good.

After skiing Don't Swill and the full headwall of the Spearhead we skinned back up to the Stairmaster.

Benat ready to hit the Stairmaster.  I was worried that I haven't been touring this year as much as I would have liked to stay in shape, but I boshed it up here in 17 minutes.

Looking down Warrior 1.

Shredding. Snow was perfect spring carpet.

Benoit Stoked at the bottom.  What a line.

Back at the top of Corona bowl.  Perfect half day mission.

NYE trip to Elfin Lakes

I had it on good authority that the NYE party at Elfin Lakes can really kick off….  Apparently they employees of BC Parks have gotten fed up with this over the past few years, so this year they were ruthless in turning away people at the bottom of the hill who didn't have a tent, once the hut was deemed full at 7.30 in the morning!  So instead of the 60 people in the hut and 50 people outside, it was more like 30 people in the hut and 50 people outside… and the party was fun, but not out of control.  Which was good :-) As you would expect everyone in the cabin was on the same kind of program, and the hut was full enough to get the party vibe in full swing, but there was still enough space to sit around the table and banter.

We didn't really do any skiing on the whole trip… but hey, its New Years Eve!

Sunset over Red Heather

Looking over the Howe Sound Islands to Vancouver Island

Atwell as night falls

Site of the old lodge

View from the tent in the morning

Not a bad spot

Long lens on Alpha

First coffee of 2015

Probably very few places which were busier than this at 8am on New Years Day!

Dope light on Mamquam

Sky Pilot group.

Swivel Rocker

December 26th 2014

We wanted to ski the Million Dollar Couloir on Cayoosh, but heavy trail breaking up the glacier (not to mention getting off route around treeline slowed us down a bit, so we settled for Swivel Rocker instead… Not that this is a terrible plan B of course… Swivel Rocker is one of my favourite runs… So long and playful feeling, and the snow quality was top draw.  Probably some of the best snow I've skied in the past 2 years!  The approach to Cayoosh was just about OK… the road is kind of bushy, and the forest section between the lake and the bottom of the glacier could do with a little more filling in, but overall it is ok.  Actaully the worst part was skiing out from the bottom of swivel rocker.  That section in the creek needs a lot more snow.  Overall we made it fine, but it was annoying and took about an hour, where as in good conditions it should take less than 10 minutes!

Steve eyes up the approach.  Not the deepest snowpack ever, but but overall fairly straight forward

The Big Three of the Joffre group from the top of Swivel Rocker.

Swivel Rocker from the top. 1000m of fall line skiing in creamy pow.