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.

Confidence

Confidence is a double edged sword in regards to backcountry travel. In one way it allows you to get more done because you move forward confidently and push upwards when others may turn back. But it must also be tempered with lots of self-analysis otherwise it can lead you into dangerous terrain.

I understand that I have a lot of confidence and have accomplished many things because of it but I always try to watch my actions and analyze them from a distant perspective.

In the morning the avalanche report said high hazard so we decided to proceed with caution. I imagined myself touring up through the trees and thought to keep us always in the protection of the large trees. But when we got out to the fingers I saw that most of the avalanche paths had run to mid path over night. This it seemed was an indication that the snow load had already fallen and that perhaps it was somewhat safe in the open path. So instead of the safest way up I thought I would push the skin track out a bit more. Which exposed us longer to overhead hazards. Not for the entire up but for longer than we needed to. It worked out and we all skinned to where we needed to be.

But in retrospect why expose when there really is no need. Always stay a little scared and follow the rules. Use every trick to keep the scales balanced on the side of safety and you will get far more days out in the backcountry. Be wary of confidence as it can breed complacency.

A decent day with some good powder skiing. Though it was a little upside down because the snow had fallen could and then a warmer , more dense layer landed on top of it. But all in all good skiing.

Day 22 done 78 to go.