Trip Reports & Conditions

First of all, I would like to thank all the people that are supporting me and other Canadian team members in our efforts to represent Canada at the world skimo racing scene this season. Without you it would be very close to impossible. Thank you very much.

On February 19th, five members of the Canadian National Skimo Team boarded a plane headed to Europe.
The journey’s primary objectives are the World Ski Mounatineering Championships in Andorra, and a four day stage race in France – Pierra Menta. And learning…
Three of the five – James Minifie, Alex Wigley and I – switched a plane in London to eventually land in Barcelona.
Julie Matteau and Jeff Colvin continued to attend a skimo training camp in Sicily (Italy) where they joined other team members.
The travels were tiring, however, I felt a certain privilege to “visit” three Olympic cities in less than 13 hours:

1. We flew from Vancouver BC where the 2010 Winter Olympics are in a full swing.
2. Switched planes in London that will host the next Summer Olympics in 2012.
3. And landed in Barcelona where Canada captured 7 gold, 4 silver and 7 bronze medals during the 1992 Summer Olympics.

Culture shocks

Liking the culture, not so much the civilization.
Living in Canada for almost 9 years now, and going back to Europe only occasionally past few years, I caught myself being somewhat depressed by seeing that humans managed to leave their mark at every spot over the old continent by now.

Endless webs of chairlifts, roads climbing the most exposed terrain features and people fighting for every square inch made me to be thankful for the Canadian wilderness.
And then there was James, who lives up at Yukon’s White Horse, getting awestruck by not being able to see backcountry past the last chairlift. Simply, more and more chairlifts followed.
But all three of us sure like the food, architecture and the spontaneity with which people great everyday here. And yesterday, all turned a corner when we went to check out the individuals race course :).

Race engines tune ups

For the first two ski days we only attacked the ski runs right across the road from our hotel at Soldeu as jet lag and 9h time difference didn’t let us do any damage in the backcountry.
But yesterday, after a first full-night sleep, we caught a taxi ride up the valley to Grau Roig to check out the course for the World Championships’ individual race that will take place on Wednesday, March 3rd.
Once on skis, we were all shining with big smiles as we reached the real backcountry in just about 30min of skinning.
In the process we got passed by a couple of Spanish Team members that were practicing their furious stride frequency in Pierre Gignoux carbon boots.
However, they stopped for a moment to great us and once I recognized one of them (I met Manu Perez a couple of years ago at Whistler) they showed us the way and offered us to join them. Even though the offer was exciting we decided to stick to our acclimatization plans and let the fast deers run…and of course to break trail for us.
Few moments later we were treated to being past by Mireia Miro, top caliber female skimo racer, and one think became very clear – in Europe, even if you have carbon F1 boots you can look a like a tourist :).

95% of the individual race course is in the backcountry with avalanche debris covering couple spots of race course. Based on what we saw, it will be an amazing venue for a skimo race with lots of technical sections whether on the uphills or downhills.
» You can see more pictures from this day and the course at Alex’ Ski Theory blog.

Big traverse plans

Since I have yet to meet a Canadian that would look at a topo map without connecting glaciers, cols and ridges for possible traverses all three of us studied the map of Andorra at some point since leaving Barcelona.

One traverse specifically made us excited but will most likely be left for an attempt later in the future – a circumnavigation of the whole country!
Based on the map we have it looks very possible to gain ridges (about 2300m) above the Andorran capital Andorra la Vella (1300m) via summer hiking trails.
Then in a clockwise direction follow the ridges and high plateaus (between 2000-2900m) that create a natural border between Andorra and its neighbors – Spain and France.
And the coolest thing about this traverse is that the whole Andorra state fits easily on a 90×90 cm map in 1:40 000 resolution.

Plans for next few days

Plans for the immediate future involve good rest, some race gear shopping (which can be endless in Andorra – a tax free zone and plenty of gear to choose from) and reconnoitering the team’s race course tomorrow.
Besides that, we will try to meet as many fellow racers as we can, learn from them and once home share it all with you.

Here is a quick news on how it looks for skiing at Duffey Lake area on the West Coast. During the past two weeks I did two trips to Cayoosh area:

1. I headed there for a day on Dec 30th, 2009 and the snow coverage was quite good and the quality of snow was good too (at some places even great).
2. Then I headed there for a second time for an overnight trip on Jan 9th, 2010 and the conditions were completely different from the previous experience and they are most likely like that even today.

In both cases the visibility was OK below 2000m, above that it was either a whiteout or not even good enough to try go higher.

Conditions as of Jan 10th, 2010 – weather, snow, skiing and avalanches

Weather set it all up and somewhat spoilled a trip for me and my two friends. It was raining lightly all the way up to around 1650m, then it turned to some snow. Even over night almost no crust formed on the surface up to about 1600m. Above that very little.
Visibility was good up to 2000-2100m and there were occasional breaks in the clouds with blue sky and sun peeking through.
Snow was very wet – “late afternoon in May conditions” – up to about 1750m and it was wet down to about 30cm below the surface. The snow was quite moist all the way to 1950m.
There was a small accumulation (2-4cm) of new very moist snow on top of an older thin crust during the two days.
Skiing wasn’t what we expected but all in all…it wasn’t that bad – very warm and wet spring conditions in January.
We didn’t even get on the Armchair Glacier that leads you to Cayoosh Mounatin as the visibility was very poor. But I did not expect skiing to be much better there – drier for sure but very wind affected (as I observed on Dec 30th).
Avalanches

Surprisingly, with this rapid warming trend we didn’t see any avalanche activity whether natural or caused by us or other people. For sure, there were occasional sloughs running from our skis on steep terrain but nothing scary at all.
We did a shovel compression test on N-NE slope at top of the tree line and we didn’t get any results that would make us worry.
So within the elevations we were touring in we skied pretty much anything we wanted and nothing was giving any impressions of instability.

Photos

Since pictures tell more than 1000 words here are some more:

Photos taken by Stano and Tomas.
If you have any questions regarding the conditions on those two occasions feel free to ask below. Or report more recent observations for others.

Yesterday, December 19th, the weather forecast predicted a break in the recent storm cycle on the South Coast and five of us headed to Coquihalla area which is best known for the Coquihalla Highway (between Hope and Merritt, in BC).
The trip was special for me because the timing of my and John’s schedules finally collided and I was able to get a touring day alongside someone that introduced me to Canadian mountains (via his guide book), and through his projects inspires me to find and define my own ski touring goals and dreams.

The day – weather, snow, skiing and avalanches

We chose our objective based on the current avalanche conditions and the weather that was forecasted.
Alpaca Peak (2040m) is a full day ski touring trip that follows about 4-5 kilometers long ridge, over Zupjok Peak and Llama Peak. Access to the ridge is via a logging road and steep trees.
All that means that trip is doable in almost any avalanche conditions and the views are spectacular.
However, in the fog the navigation on the ridge can be very tricky. You can find the trip in John’s book “Exploring the Coast Mountains on Skis” on page 198 under “Alpaca Peak”.
Weather
Whole day, the weather wasn’t a blue bird as we got treated to something better – rolling clouds in multiple layers with occasional sunny breaks replacing fog clouds. This provided for excellent photo opportunities.
Temperatures were quite warm all day and most likely above zero Celsius up to about 1600-1700m.
Snow and skiing
The weather on the South Coast was pretty warm and wet for past couple of days. Therefore the snow conditions for skiing were a bit…miserable.
Alpine areas were either heavily wind affected or with a thick rain crust on the top, or both. Inside and below the tree line, the snow was heavy and mostly wet.
Depth of the snow pack was sufficient for good traveling conditions even at the lowest elevations (around 1200m) and in the forest.
Snow and avalanches

As for avalanche conditions, this was one of the least stable and most tricky snow packs we could observe. The recent weather over past 2-3 weeks allowed sufficient time for surface hoar to grow into great dimensions and the subsequent heavy/wet snow fall created a thick slab layer on top of it.
By walking on a ridge, about 5-7m from the edge of a cornice, our party remote triggered  a cornice fall twice (just couple of meters apart) that then triggered an avalanche on the slope below it. Both were about 100m wide and run to the below basin, about 100m down. Through the fog cloud, the size of both avalanches appeared to be about 2-2.5.
During the day we didn’t witness any other avalanches going off, however, we observed slabs at many locations, on all kinds of aspects and at almost all elevations.

Interview with John Baldwin and trip photos

I and John are working on an interview for the SkinTrack website. Part of the interview will be a little contest for you where you can win the latest edition of John’s guide book. So make sure to check back soon.
Otherwise you can get your copy of “Exploring the Coast Mountains on Skis” guide book from John’s website or pick it up from outdoor stores that are listed on his website.
And here are some photos from the Alpaca Peak trip, outdoor and landscape photographers would have loved the light conditions.

Early season conditions are long time gone.
No one remembers them anymore.
White fluffy stuff keeps fallin’,
So the brave can be rollin’.
This little poem created in less than 60 seconds says it all. Simply, the current West Coast snow conditions are out of this world.

Two weeks ago there was about 20cm of snow on the ground at 1600m up Whistler Mountain or at Mount Baker ski area in US. During the next 3 days over 100cm came from the sky. Since then it didn’t stop.
And it is one thing that an astounding amounts of snow fell in the south-western BC over the past two weeks, but another thing is the quality.
Even though, not as consistent in fluffiness as the slopes of Columbia or Monashee Mountains, there is real Champagne powder to be had on the Coast these days.
Over the past 12 days I toured at 3 different resorts as it is simply too dangerous to go anywhere else: Mt Baker ski area, local resort above Vancouver and on a mountain that will hopefully stay closed for couple of more days.
I haven’t heard any ski reports from other places on the Coast but based on some highway cams it looks pretty damn good for this time of the year. Here’s some more proof.
Except the “Sleeping lifts” photo other pics were taken by some of my touring partners Dusan and Tomas. Thanks a lot.

After a week of flurries and rain at lower elevations the temperatures higher up were much colder and we can see some real snow now. Weather forecast is calling for more precipitation over the next couple of days except some occasional sunny periods. Let’s hope snow is here to stay.
Update on this report at 7pm on Oct 26:
People are reporting that some decent skiing is to be had around the Revelstoke – Rogers Pass area, higher elevations of course. Also, it looks like Sunshine Meadows (and Village) got some reasonable snow past few days and skiing was reported.
Below are images (taken at 11am on Oct 26, 2009) from five webcams that capture scenery at five different ski resorts:

• Whistler Blackcomb, Coast Mountains (Whistler, BC)
• Sun Peaks, Interior (Kamloops, BC)
• Big White, Interior (Kelowna, BC)
• Kicking Horse, between Columbia and Rocky Mountains (Golden, BC)
• Lake Louise, Rocky Mountains (Lake Louise, AB)

Whistler Blackcomb

Webcam is located at 1860m on Blackcomb Mountain. This is 1100m higher than the base which had around 1cm of snow covering the grass at 11am this morning.

Sun Peaks

This webcam is located at 1270m by Umbrella Cafe which is basically the base of the resort.

Big White

Webcam is located at the bottom of Snow Ghost Express, at the base, at about 1700m.

Kicking Horse

Webcam is located at Eagle’s Eye (top of the resort) at about 2430m.

Lake Louise

Webcam is located at the top of Ptarmigan, at about 2150m, looking towards Larch.

Early season snow report from the Canadian mountains says that some already ski, some are very close, and some are still riding bikes and hiking.
After receiving couple of emails with snow conditions from various places a friend of mine suggested it would be good to write it up in a report. And especially the early season conditions are important to share since they can either safe some driving or jump star the season.
I will try to come up with such a snow report on a “regular schedule” as the season progresses but I am yet to define the word “regular”. And I hope that guys won’t mind using their direct quotes with my occasional comments.

Rockies (Oct 8, 2009 – Canmore area)

“We’ve got 6-8 cm  of fresh in Canmore. Not pow shredding, but I’ll be on the xc boards tomorrow,” Steve wrote.
6-8 cm is not much but for Canmore is close to peak season conditions…after all it beats the Coast right now 😉

Selkirks (Oct 8, 2009 – Rogers Pass)

Andrew works and plays in the same mountains, so he knows his backyard. Here is what he reported for Rogers Pass area:
“I went  up to the Asulkan cabin yesterday and there was about 2 cm of melt freeze graupel at 1700m and 10 cm of nice fluffy pristine face-shot quality pow at the cabin (2000m), almost enough to cover up all the rocks, almost.
When I left work today there was some serious flurries going on, so there is proably a few more cms now. But that is all. It’s a good start and I hear there is more on it’s way, so the first turns will be soon.”

Yukon (Oct 8, 2009 – Whitehorse)

Yukon seems to be doing the best so far. With the trend going, they are almost getting past “the early season conditions” factors up there. Here is more details from James:
“Back on skis today. Headed up Montana Mnt, about 45 min south of Whitehorse toward White Pass and Skagway, Alaska.
It’s been snowing like mad for 4 days straight here in Whitehorse, so decided it was time.
About 25cm of fresh above 1600m and skiable above 2000m.  Still a lot of rock dodging to do but turns on Oct 8 ain’t bad. Heading Haines, AK way tomorrow for another snow hunt.”

South Coast (Oct 8, 2009 – Vancouver, Whistler, Squamish)

On the Coast, we are pretty much… It makes for good fall hiking though with beautiful colours everywhere. Even up at Whistler and Pemberton area it is safe to say that it’s quite impossible to ski, unless you ski “glacier ice”.
Andy says: “It is still summer on the Coast!”
Alex, from Whistler, adds more detail on what is really going on:
“A week and a half ago we got dumped on up high.  Around 10cm of snow, much of which has still stuck around, but nothing even near skiable.
Some friends skied near Squamish yesterday, mostly neve though.
It’s going to be rowdy starting up this year, all of our snowbridges have melted, and crevasses are hungry. Large expanses of ice are now showing, that previously were covered most summers, and the heat also brought massive rockfall.
Early season is going to be tricky.  Hopefully, its deep this year.”