Kootenay Cold Smoke Powder Festival

The body is feeling great again, my feet are back to normal and it is time to hammer a few ten thousand foot days. I am almost at half way in terms of available time and I am at day 41, I hope to have 44 days done by the 15th which will mean I am six days behind in my goal. That will leave 90 days to ski 56 days so almost two thirds of the time I have to be skiing 10 000 footers. Intimidating but completely possible. Just have to keep focused and get out skiing.

In two weeks I will be heading down to the Kootenay Cold Smoke Powder Festival in Nelson. I will be giving a slide show and also hosting two days of clinics. During the clinics I will give up a few of my “secrets” as well as provide a great day of touring. Seems like a cheaper way to get guided by yours truly.

Seriously though it should be a very interesting weekend with lots of slide shows and interesting skiers from across North
America. Come down and get into the backcountry.

MacDonald

Last night I mentioned to Mickie that today was going to be an adventure, I don’t know if he thought I was serious or not.

It was an adventurous day to say the least. 11000 feet of new terrain and some wild skiing. After four thousand feet of climbing we found ourselves stopped in our tracks. What was ahead seemed to burly for the conditions and the only thing to do was ski down the chute below us. A bit solar but pretty amazing. It started off steep and got tighter till it turned out of sight. In to the unknown we went and had a great 2000 foot chute.

We then toured up Avalanche Mountains east ridge and had a great descent down the east side. Great fast turns. Here is Aaron charging down the slope.

After 8000 feet of touring we had to find our way home. Stuck deep behind Mt-MacDonald we toured up to the easiest col. Which we thought led to the Herdman Couloir. It was immediately obvious we were not exactly where we thought we were. But the chute below us was narrow and curvaceous, and it called to us. Mostly because it was 5:20 and options were limited. The chute led us out and down into the north facing bowl and 4500 feet of great powder led us back to the road and our car.

Amazing day of discovery in Roger’s Pass, I should probably take tomorrow off to spend time with my family.

all for now.

I love Roger’s Pass!!!

I can’t stop loving this place. Yesterday I went out for a little tour with my sister and her friend and within a two hour hike up Balu we were skiing untracked north facing powder. A couple of nice laps felt great and today was time to get back on the bandwagon.

 I left early and toured up Girzzly for  two runs. One was NW facing with some great snow on top of colder facetted powder. deep and steep it was over a little too soon, we could probably  name this run "teenage sex". My second run was great but had a definite sun crust underneath the 25 cm of new snow.

 With 4000 feet climbed I then drove down to Loop brook and headed into the Bonney. There were 18 cars in the parking lot and skin track everywhere but being local I knew that I had freshies waiting.  Jesse, my sister and her friend were psyched and ready for another great day. Aaron, Steve and I were also ready for some more sweet turns. Touring up  Aaron ran off and I hung on and did a lap with him while we waited for the others to join us. We all met on top of the moraine and had a great 2000 foot descent, cold north facing and deep. All were smiles.

The light was good for our run but Aaron and I lapped back up for another 2500 foot descent and the sky never opened up for us. Similar to skiing through a cloud, the snow was fantastic but for most of it we couldn’t tell if we were skiing up or down.

 I love Roger Pass and will have issues getting bored of the terrain or the snow. 10400 feet of great skiing……