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| Meeting point |
Early start as we are already in May and want to avoid the warmer temperatures. Wake up at 4:20am, get ready and hit to road by 4:40. Get to the trail head at 6:30am after dropping off my car in a different spot, drove back to the start with Andy and met with Stephane.
We begin the climb, semi flat start to the base on Pig's Tail. Sunny day, blue ski, couldn't ask for a better day :-).
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| Hwy 40 going south |
Going up I started to struggle as the snow is hard and slippery, felt down a few times and after regrouping with Andy decided to put on ski crampons and go straight up ! First time using the crampons, it is quite a grip !
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| View of Pig's Tail |
As we are going up, in the last section I decided to boot up since I was continuing to slide down (even with the crampons), so not shame ! take off the skis, grab them as if they were poles and start hiking up! 150 steps more or less and I hit the summit !
When we hit the summit (the first of 3 that day) I checked the watch and we have climbed 600mts in the first 2 hours.
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| Pig's Tail |
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| Going up Pig's Tail |
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| Andy moving up |
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| Time for Ski Crampons ! |
We had the first downhill of the day, under a massive cornice but with stable conditions we skied down one by one to the Commonwealth area. The downhill was nice, not very deep snow, but good enough to keep the fun.
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| Coming Down Pig's Tail, biggest cornice I have seen so far |
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| Super Slope |
The second climb was about to start. This was going to be probably under 400mts.
I did this one before and remember it wasn't that bad. Still a challenge since it is through the trees, but at least is shorter than the first one.
It seems like today Andy (who was in the front breaking trail all day) was always going vertical ! yeah, f#$%^ switchbacks, let's go up as steep as possible !! very hard to go up, specially for a new guy like me where technique is not quite there yet. I struggle a few kick turns and at some point slide down quite a bit ! doing everything I could to hang on to my life I grabbed branches as I was sliding down.. Oh man, so much energy to get back up !
Up at the top of Super Slope as you look North (towards our next peak) we had to ski down to Trish Lake. In better snow conditions this is a popular down hill, lots of deep snow and fun down. Today, was a bit rough, avalanche debris were making the descend a bit sketchy, trying to follow Andy's tracks and at the same time keeping an eye on rock solid pieces if snow debris.
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| Super challenging coming down on avalanche debris |
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| Came down right between those poles |
More amazing views ahead of us today. It seems like every view is better than the one before, amazing scenery of the Rockies, south, north, east and west.. everywhere you look there are these majestic mountains in front of you, pictures can't describe how beautiful they are...
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| The Fist, look from the bottom |
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| The Fist (mountain to the right) |
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| Almost at the top of Tent Ridge (last summit of the day) |
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| Tent Ridge with The Fist on the left and some wind lips to the right |
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| Tent Ridge, this is where we came down |
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| Stephane |
Finally we hit the bottom of the last hill. Andy had marked with GPS the coordinates where the car was parked, however not entirely sure about the location of it, he mentioned we may end up a few miles down the road... and that perhaps walking up to the car could be necessary.. But with such an amazing valley to ski down we didn't want to take a different route.
Coming down this valley was by far the highlight of the day! It felt like mountain biking, through the trees, ups and downs, creeks, side slope skiing, branches all over !! what a fun way to finish the day, except...... when Andy stopped to say that "he could almost feel running into a bear in this valley any time".... holicrap!, the fun went away with his comment and for the last few kms all I could think of was running into a bear in the next corner !!! Last week we saw gigantic bears paw marks all along the way, and I mean GIGANTIC! I am not exaggerating.
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| Down all the way to the car through this valley |
Well, with no bears at sight, we made it right to the car. Maybe 100mts or less, pretty darn accurate navigation skills Andy has. All in all we had a great day in the mountains today, few blisters and sore hamstrings, but with no major issues to report. Backcountry adventure number 9 for me in the books!!
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