2011/2012 Canadian Rockies Roll Call and StokeThread...

[skian_]

one frome finger, and snow more summer talk

[angrysasquatch]

Any recommendations on a good guide book for the cdn rockies? 93N/ Jasper in particular. I see sexy lines all over the place, but figuring out the access and logistics is hard when you're green. I want to be get my feet wet without being unprepared for what I'm getting into.

[mntlion]

angry: nothing, best to just look up, and find lines.

[time2clmb]

Huzzah! Thread ressurection. Good to see people are still getting after it.

grand daddy ski well on saturday, 30cms pen in spots and where it sluffd was still soft. good bootin, and a bit icey with fresh on top pitch. someone forgot skins on french fingers.hahaha. and cramponed from burstall p lot . i recieved an illegal camping warning because the bitches in kananaskis didnt get laid or somethin. keep the stoke coming and were headed to moraine lake for a fay quad mission. leavin monday sometime and stay a few nights, 688 1386. stoke it up

No issues with freeze yesterday in GD? We were just up the road from there and the fucking crust in the couloir wasn't carrying for shit, I could poke my finger through it. Must have been the slight aspect change and just a wee bit less sheltered. Any issues with sluffing, the general vicinity was having some good size sluff coming off the walls? What time did you guys start up the couloir at?

Better to have a warning then a fine, maybe they did get laid. You should see some of the shit illegal campers do in the parks it's fucking rediculous.

Any recommendations on a good guide book for the cdn rockies? 93N/ Jasper in particular. I see sexy lines all over the place, but figuring out the access and logistics is hard when you're green. I want to be get my feet wet without being unprepared for what I'm getting into. .

Not trying to sound like a dick here but you have to learn how to walk before you run. If you see the line and need a guide book to figure out access then you need to build experience on alot of other things other than pure ski ability...ie navigation, reading terrain etc. The amount of people that are out pissing around with not a clue of how to plan, navigate, read terrain, figure out timing etc etc etc is lunacy...it all combined takes years of getting out to get it dialed. Also blows my mind how people that have been b.c. skiing less than a season are out "figuring it out" booting up couloirs and big terrain with virtually no avalanche terrain experience especially when the reports are done for the year...it's reckless. There's no shortage the last couple seasons of people that do it willy nilly and get away with it though, take a look at some of the more popular couloirs now...you see total fucking morons haphazardly booting their way up them at noon while the suns been beaming down on the cornices at the top the whole time. No guidebook is going to prepare you, the bottom line is you'll be over your head. Go out with some one that has lots of experience and learn from them if you want to stack your odds in your favour.

If you want a good idea of how many people fuck themselves in the local mountains on a given year get the Annual Accidents in North American Mountaineering and give it a read each year and then consider it's only a small fraction of what gets reported. Worked at the hospital for a while and it's pretty eye opening to see how often the mountain rescue heli comes in. It's why i'm always telling people to take f.a. training of some kind, cause quite frankly if you don't and you do this shit regularly your a selfish fucking cunt cause if your at it enough eventually it's going to be needed....more of an eventuality than an if.

To answer your question though there is no guidebook for the 93N area that covers couloirs and hopefully it stays that way...most of them are pretty obvious from the road. There is the summits and icefields book that has the normal touring stuff in it.

*excuse my rant i've been indoors all day.

[Eldo]

...excuse my rant i've been indoors all day.

Well, if you're going to spend all your time indoors, then I'm giving up on this thread!


I think an Icefields Parkway for Dummies book is a brilliant idea. I mean a lot of us spent years and years wandering around looking for routes to ski. Hell, we didn't have TGR, Google Earth or even the Internet. Imagine that?

Just ribbing you, AS. Get out there and explore. Not every day has to be a big ski descent, sometimes it's just time well spent figuring things out.

[skiitsbetter]

someone forgot skins on french fingers.hahaha. and cramponed from burstall p lot

Haha who does that? Good skiing with you! Did Smuts on the Sunday after.

Was up at Bow hut on the weekend for a glacier course. Moonlight ski on the glacier was all time. Someone (else) skied the face of St. Nic. And my friends skied the wapta traverse from peyto-west louise in 7:35. Got a big day planned for tomorrow, but if the clear nights continue, I'd be keen to get out. PM me!

[time2clmb]

"Someone (else) skied the face of St. Nic"

Off of the summit or from the connecting ridge? I'm 0/2 on ski attempts on that fucking thing.

[angrysasquatch]

T2C: Might have to check out that summits and icefields book. I am not looking to cross off all the big lines I can see from the road, just trying to find some good areas to check out.

I think an Icefields Parkway for Dummies book is a brilliant idea. I mean a lot of us spent years and years wandering around looking for routes to ski. Hell, we didn't have TGR, Google Earth or even the Internet. Imagine that?

Just ribbing you, AS. Get out there and explore. Not every day has to be a big ski descent, sometimes it's just time well spent figuring things out.

That's what I want to do. I just don't want to be walking through trees and swearing all day trying to find a way across an impasse.

[mntlion]

3/4 at moraine lake is a easy approach once the road is open. BIG LINE, and big deal if something goes wrong, but easy to start with.

[time2clmb]

^and notorious in the climbing world for accidents and rock fall. Start early.

[angrysasquatch]

3/4 at moraine lake is a easy approach once the road is open. BIG LINE, and big deal if something goes wrong, but easy to start with.

Holy sheeeeit. That's a bit more serious than I'm looking for. Might do some looking around, sounds like a really good area.

Gonna sleep on my season edit, if it's as good in the morning I'll put it up.

[go_up]

Off of the summit or from the connecting ridge? I'm 0/2 on ski attempts on that fucking thing.

Summit.



Saw it from Crowfoot today. Great day, other than the cloudy sky...

[mindthegap]

Off of the summit or from the connecting ridge? I'm 0/2 on ski attempts on that fucking thing.

the summit, then moved skiers right towards the rollover.

great weekend up in the wapta, unfortunately most the of the terrain around bow hut is pretty mellow. is peyto area the place to be? goood to learn all the glacier skills though, opens up lots of new terrain! unfortunately my phone/camera went missing in the parking lot, so all my stoke is lost forever.

[mindthegap]

Summit.
Saw it from Crowfoot today. Great day, other than the cloudy sky...

and devastating ski conditions at the top of crowfoot. breakable crust made for some interesting survival skiing. any chance you were the group second up, behind the big group?

[go_up]

and devastating ski conditions at the top of crowfoot. breakable crust made for some interesting survival skiing. any chance you were the group second up, behind the big group?

Oh yeah, right, forgot about that. That part sucked. But hey, there was 3 turns of dry powder under the shadow of Little Crowfoot.

We were the group of 3, behind the group of 4 and group of 5. Looked like only 1 person of those 9 went to the summit?

[jamesp]

great weekend up in the wapta, unfortunately most the of the terrain around bow hut is pretty mellow. is peyto area the place to be? goood to learn all the glacier skills though, opens up lots of new terrain! unfortunately my phone/camera went missing in the parking lot, so all my stoke is lost forever.

Its a big icefield, most of the skiable terrain it is fairly mellow. All the steeper areas I've skied up that way (not many BTW) were off the road & not from the huts.

[time2clmb]

There are alot of big steep faces around the huts (meaning easily day tripable from huts) that can be skied...most people stick to the more obvious mellower stuff though. Plenty of scary no fall gnar lines that can be put up also for anyone with a bit of imagination. Just refrain from guidebooks and what other people are doing. At least 5 obvious ones in the above pic St. Nic ski line pic alone that no one will probably ever touch. If you really want to scare the shit out of yourself ski the Bow Hut approach headwall above the canyon...just don't fall it's probably never been touched.... better know how to take a fucking compass bearing though to get in it. That line on St. Nic is pretty fucking steep and exposed to boot.

[angrysasquatch]

KH season edit:

[MustangSVT]

That was pretty awesome to watch angrysasquatch. I'll admit I'm a bit jealous to see some of the footage in there, the snow looked just great. Thanks for the video though, makes a monday at work a little better. *thumbs up*

[jamesp]

St Nic is steep & exposed for sure. I pretty much group the headwall above the canyon in the "un-skiable" category... (for me at least...).

[time2clmb]

It's doable, but you'd have to have to really sack up for it first along with a bunch of stuff coming together just right. Getting in to it would be scary as fuck, totally committing and blind the whole way in. Wouldn't want to climb the line either with the serac above it. A slight devation to either side would pretty much fuck you over quite hard and put you in to no mans land. Have thought about it long and hard but have come to accept that it's just too risky...even have a little tick on my map of where one would enter it. There is also a strong possibility of the entrance choke having water ice lurking just under the surface from studying it in October and November and comparing snow cover later in the year and a fall there would send you down and over the abyss.

[skiitsbetter]

Tried to day trip Joffre, got within 250m of the summit, but found some planar failures about 20cms. The lakeshore slog at the end of the day was sucky to say the least.



Unreal terrain in that area!

[Spooky]

Skied another line yesterday that's been on my mind for a little while. So far this season every time I thought about hitting it things didn't quite work out - shitty vis, small slabs releasing etc.

I thought my chance had gone after injuring myself recently but the Dive has been surprisingly awesome in the past week though (the wind works fucking wonders in that place in May) and so yesterday seemed like as good a day as any.

It was a mix of wintery blower turns up high along with some sketchy, really skiddy crust in some sections underneath. The bad news started when I got to the exposed section over the big cliff though where everything turned into some truly disgusting breakable crust. I knew the landing was soft enough to go for at least about 30 yards after the drop where it was still in the shadow. Not hitting the crust again straight away was the silver lining. If i'm not mistaken the line's called 'no way out'. It certainly fucking seems like it when you get to the crux.

Change the quality on youtube for best results.

[time2clmb]

Nice work! New skis?

[Spooky]

Nice work! New skis?

They are pretty new but unfortunately not mine - just demoing them off a mate for a few days. Speaking of which they are for sale for a good price if anyone is interested - hybrid DPS Wailer 99s in a 176 and in very good condition. They rip the piss out of absolutely everything, struggling to think of a ski i've had more fun on.