Big White Backcountry

The was a day trip to the side country at the local ski hill. We've been up a few times this year but haven't blogged those days. Today was really nice so I thought I'd share a few pics. It's an interesting time of year: backcountry skiing one day and mountain biking from our front door the next. Kelowna isn't exactly Revelstoke or Golden but we'll take it.

Blanket Glacier Chalet

Not the greatest snow conditions for our annual ski trip this year. However we took advantage of the fast travel conditions to venture far and wide.

The cabin is pretty basic compared to most other commercial backcountry lodges we've visited but it's efficient and very well designed and grew on us through the week. But the sauna. Oh man. Simply the best.



The tenure is shared with CMH heli-skiing. With the conditions severely limiting the terrain available even for heli-skiers they were forced to spend a lot of time in our vicinity. Total pain in the ass is putting mildly. Oh well, we co-existed.

At one point after they had dropped in above us yet again their lead guide Ken stopped by to offer his apologies. No worries, we were cool. And also to offer a "pop". A what? We were dumbfounded, not sure that we understood. But yup, that's what he meant. Free lift! We took full advantage and 10 minutes later were standing on a ridge top above a run that would have taken us several ours to reach if we even could have made it there at all. In the end the run was merely okay but the story was priceless!

The Overlook

Back to the Overlook again. The Avalanche Crest trail was so icy that we took off our skis and walked!



But this day will forever be known as The Day that Martin Lost his Ski. A picture being worth a thousand words...

Freedom! Spot the ski.


By some miracle it hit our uptrack, flew through the air like a magnificent javelin, and buried itself tip first in the snow(bottom left in photo)








It was a near thing but all's well that ends well.

Lookout Col Traverse

The rolling terrain below Lookout Col was so wind blasted and scoured it was like skiing up a series of snowy dunes.



On the far side of the col Martin and I watched the others struggle down the south facing slope and decided to contour around into the bowl searching for better snow.



It worked out and we had some fun turns.



What a place.

Vaux Moraines

The guys were staying at the Wheeler for a few days of skiing before we all headed into Blanket Glacier the following week. Conditions were still...let's just say character building below 2200 metres or so. We hoped the Vaux Moraines would still be holding snow so we headed that way once again.



We were lucky. The wind had blown in quite a bit of snow onto the north side of the moraine.