Malakwa Gorge

Up to The Gorge on Saturday with Dan, Neal, and a friend of Neal's. We all piled into Dan's truck for the drive up. At about 12k we hit a minor traffic jam caused by a very apologetic couple trying to get up in an AWD Acura with all season tires. She seemed a little spooked and said something about walking back down. We didn't pay much attention at the time but sure enough on the drive down we saw her tracks along the side the of the road for kilometre after kilometre.

In the process of shuffling vehicles around to get passed them, the cable for the release mechanism on Dan's emergency brake snapped with the brakes fully engaged. We all swarmed around under the truck trying to finesse a solution until Dan got bored, grabbed a tire iron, and twisted it around the break cable until it snapped with a loud ka-thunk! Problem solved. Almost. The truck thought that the emergency was still on and we had to tune out the incessant "ding-ding-ding-ding" of the warning chime for the rest of the drive.

It was an odd start to an odd day. The pull-out was packed with cars at 15km and it was very warm. Upon reaching the treeline we saw recent avalanche activity everywhere. There were 60cm crown lines all over the place. There was a buried surface hoar layer that was ridiculously reactive. Digging a quick hasty pit the layer popped out as we cut the back of the column with a ski pole.

Unwilling to venture higher we made a run back down to the road to find the parking lot half empty. After a leisurely lunch we took another short run and called it a day with pints back at The Burner.