Off guiding

Well I am off to guide for five days at Sol Mountain, a remote lodge in the Southern Monashees. There is no internet available so I won’t blog while I am there. Pity I am beginning to feel addicted to this little blog.

I am looking forward to my first “real” ski tour guiding. Becoming a great guide has always been the end product that I am aiming towards. For years I have gone out and developed my mountain sense, in the aim of becoming a very experienced guide in whom his clients can trust implicitly.

This week at Sol will be a fantastic start to my guiding career. I look forward to taking my clients out and showing them some fantastic mountain days. I know that the snow will be fantastic so it should be easy to give them a fantastic week of backcountry skiing.

It should be interesting to see how I accomplish my ten thousand foot days while guiding, I am imagining 5 am starts, with 4000 feet in by breakfast and then a great day of up to 5000 feet with my clients and then a small evening run to roll the watch over. Sounds easy in theory but it will be harder in practice.

Back in a few days…

Last day with the folks

My mom and step Dad have been here for three weeks and today was their final day of touring. I went out early and busted off 4000 feet before I met up with them. Ian, my step brother and I toured up Grizzly shoulder with our parents. Somehow over the years I have toured plenty of places with them but never the infamous Grizzly Shoudler.

The snow was great and we all enjoyed an adventurous run down. Quite sad to watch them ski away!

Ian and I lapped back up to enjoy some steep and deep skiing down towards Teddy bear trees. On the way up I met a few people who had stumbled upon this blog. It’s ineteresting to find out how they found it but great in the end as everyone is psyched with my goal and is hopefully motivated to try their own big days.

77 days left.

Kootenay Cold Smoke Powder Festival

I traveled down to Nelson with Tracey to help organize a randonnee race at Whitewater. The Kootenay Cold Smoke Powder festival is a new backcountry festival that is being held Feb 23-25. Should be a great time; lots of experienced skiers sharing their love and knowledge of the mountains. I am running a few clinics as well as a slide show. Really looking forward to it as it will be my first slideshow and I hope I have enough to show and say to keep it interesting.

As for my trip down to Whitewater. I thought maybe I could squeeze in a 10 000 footer as well as organize a race. So I got up early and started touring up Whitewater, a fresh 25 cm covered everything and I enjoyed one nice run and then I directed my energy towards Ymir peak. The Whitewater classic. By 8.30 I was standing on the summit, I then turned my tips down and skied first choice. A fun little couloir that provided decent turns, and then followed with a couple of thousand feet of great skiing.

I met up with Rob from ROAM; an outdoor store helping out with the festival. We went for a great tour and managed to figure out a good race course that will be challenging, aesthetic and also provide the racer with some decent skiing.

I never managed my ten thousand footer but here is Rob enjoying some Kootenay Cold Smoke.