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

[TOLOCOMan]

Hmmm, doesn't sound worth the drive yet. If we were talking 39 cm at the highway, that would be a different story. Remember about 10 years ago there was literally nothing at the eastern sheds, then about 45cm at the Visitor's Centre, and over a metre in 8812 bowl on Nov 1. Was hoping it might be the same kind of deal this year, but I guess not....

Do you have a link for where you got those stats from? I don't know where to find stats for the pass until the avy report starts up.

[el hefe]

Pretty good base up high just south of revy. 70cms roughly at treeline.

[Spooky]

I would've appreciated anything with snow and/or ice when I was growing up. Instead I had to learn on this slope:



Just out of sight around the bend at the top is the upper 50M or so of the slope with the only terrain feature - 5 'moguls'.

You can't put in an edge and when you fall over it strips flesh. I can still remember the excitement of school trips there and I still fell in love with skiing. Thank fuck for mountains and snow though.

[time2clmb]

Good incentive to not fall. Where is that?

[Spooky]

Somerset, England. Not exactly a skiing mecca.

[Mex]

Don't they call that "skiing the toothbrush"?

Skiing Ontario pimples makes you appreciate the mountians. That being said sometimes I'm a bit of snow snob now.

[Lamothe]

Somerset, England. Not exactly a skiing mecca.

you win spooky , hands down

[Lamothe]

heading out to rogers saturday any suggestions ?

[time2clmb]

^yup, bring the shittiest skins you have.

[Gripen]

I was up at the pass for work last week, not really enough to be worth it I'd think. K-country has more I think.

[time2clmb]

I'm done with preseaon pass missions, it's never reaaaaally been worth it compared to the closer options. At the highest point on the pass you start at what about 1300ish metres. Out here you can get to 1900, or in the case of Highwood 2200 metres.

[Lamothe]

i heard some pretty good beta from a few days ago . And few ppl staying at the hotel came over the pass saying there was well over a foot of snow on the side of the road. Snowing hard right now , im hoping for some thing good here , my face needs a good snow smack!

[endure]

you need to remember that wind plays a major role in the alpine at the pass. Last year at new years, revy had a base of ~150 cm. The pass had a base of what they were calling 70 cm due to the wind. Based on my experience last year, 2 months later than now, definitely bring gear you don't care about (and a helmet)

[Lamothe]

There is a party going up saturday, but with all you soul crushers i may just go to the LL opener. To bad. they told be me blower pow last week with face shots? I didn;t think so either but i was hopeful!

[alive]

The pass is starting to shape up just fine. Was out there friday just to check it out and get some time in the new boots. Skinned from the parking lot all the way up with a couple of walking sections. Everything above the mouse trap is good to go, unless you think skis have real feelings. Due to gale force winds, we stuck to the tree triangle.

Along the river...


Up on the moraine...

[alive]

And yes... face shots were had!

You just need to decide if the 1-2 hour skin in is worth it. I skied most of the way out with rock skis, but the others just carried the gear.

[f2f]

Fidelity station is showing 39 cm, 52 at Rockfall.

speaking of stations, a couple of years ago we created a web interface to browse and analyze weather and hydrological data for a project of ours. it's just sitting there working, perhaps i should let you guys have your way with it and finally figure out those pesky la niña patterns once and for all. the database has all weather data from 1980 onwards for entire canada, but it's patchy and good stations are hard to find. naturally, EC has stopped access to their historical data except for major locations and there's no way to update ours anymore.

the idea is that you drop a pin on the map where you care for and it gives you all stations it can find within some radius. green is hydrological survey of canada (water flow for all major rivers since 1910 or thereabouts), grey is environment canada. each station may report slightly different things and for different periods:


then you figure out which stations you want and create a list of what values you want measured. figure out the dates you care about and select the values:


once the data is plotted it is trivial to analyze. this for example plots snow on the ground for fidelity, mistaya lodge, lake o'hara, and bow summit. the second plot averages the daily measurements and plots it for each day of the year (the labels are broken, but it was just a demo and not really polished yet):


or you can do other things, like compare the precip for banff and golden for 10 years and narrow down on 91/92 season (banff in green/purple, golden in blue/red):


the shit that we created was pretty cool, but in the end lack of good open data and other priorities shelved the project...

hope this has been interesting.

[That was Pontus]

Alive, was that you up there with Brett & John? Pondering a mission up that way next weekend.

[time2clmb]

but with all you soul crushers i may just go to the LL opener. To bad

Not trying to talk you out of it, just saying it's not worth it compared to local options. IE why drive for 3 + hours from Canmore each way and then skin for several hours when you can drive for less than 1 and put in a similar skinning effort. Once that scale tips in to Rogers Pass favour, which it will very soon then it's most definately worth the extra drive.

[time2clmb]

Hey F2F is that data still being fed to the site from the stations same day, or even every other day? If so being able to view it would be kick ass.

[Shadam]

So that shit is great and all,
but I'm a drunk and can't be farked farking around with all that shit.
so can you just keep us posted on the horse and the pass ...

ta bro ...

[f2f]

Hey F2F is that data still being fed to the site from the stations same day, or even every other day? If so being able to view it would be kick ass.

it isn't live. the latest data we have is from 2009, when EC stopped giving it away for free

[goldenshowers]

KH Dec 9
Revy Dec 3
Castle ???

KH will most likely open for a bonus weekend before their planned opening day.

[Lamothe]

Any one interested in touring around highwood on thursday shoot me a pm , might go poke around and see what i can find

[alive]

Yea, Pontus, thats them in the pics...