Still deep and fluffy

The last few days have been repeats of the same. Mostly because the access is easy, the turns amazing and the ski out relatively easy. There were 25 tracks down the two main runs on video and 8 of them were mine, all super fun and deep.  We posed up a shot but I turned the wrong way so I get lost in the pow but here is yesterday’s first turns off video. Courtesy of Joey.

The weather is not looking promising, -20 to -30’C at elevation tomorrow. If there are any winds with that it will be cold.  And the same for the next 3 days, cold and clear. Brrrrrr.  We need snow not cold and clear, but it looks like it should change by this weekend.

So no need for me to pound huge days, since sweating is not conducive to comfort when it is that fricking cold. Hopefully the real snow starts soon.

Pretty epic up high

Video peak looking great before it had its first skiers of the year. Its a bit of an assumption but I don’t believe anyone had braved it past the alders. It was an epic first tracks down it, 60 cm of super light, blower powder. Its a pity our first run off the summit was a little flat light, so I lead with a little trepidation. My second run off the summit was sunlit and great, skiing with gusto and confidence made it that much better than the first.

We then toured up to Bruin’s bowl and skied down to the valley, all in all 7 grand of great turns.

Alders

Well I have been avoiding my blog because I don’t want to see that my number is going up very slowly right now. I am avoiding writing because that means I have to enter my vertical and 4200, or 5000 feet days do not add up that quickly. So if I wait a few days the jumps are larger but still slowly falling further behind.

This is the slowest start I can remember in Revelstoke. Out of the 11 years I have skied here; only one has had a slow start like this. But that year I did not want to ski two million feet so it was OK. Now I am wanting so much more but having to be content with what we have.

Its not that its bad, up high its great! Deep, cold and fluffy, with occasional rocks to contend with. You can ski with gusto and confidence from 10 000 down to 7000 feet. Then the base disappears and its 60 cm of awesome snow on rocks and trees.  Injury fest.  Its not only the exits but the approaches. The typical zones have alders twenty feet tall.

But the skiing is great above, so I shouldn’t be complaining. And Jack suggested I stop whining and get after it; so I will.

Jerimy also wondered how I count my vertical. This can be debated for ever but the way I look at it, I am trying to climb and ski 2 million feet. The harder part being the climbing, the skiing being the reward.

So whatever human powered form of climbing that gets me to the skiing is counted. Its all effort.

Thanks to Dave Mountain and Robert Hamilton-Smith, both generously donated to my cause, which was very much appreciated as the strangle hold of debt was making it hard to breathe.