So that's why so many people ski at Corbins. We've skied the slide path to climber's right a few times (Helen's?). Today we were on the path to climber's left. That is, closer to Revelstoke. It probably requires a deep snowpack to be any good and this year certainly qualifies.
We had a little excitement on the way up releasing a small but steep SE facing roll in the new cut block. It stepped down through the previous days storm snow, through two obvious crusts, and slid on a third crust which knocked me on my ass. Very small terrain so no big deal but duly noted and we could avoid the cut block next time.
I'm not sure it's worth going all the way to the ridge top to access the upper part. It's a long trek to reach what is probably the least interesting part of the run.
First time up on Fortitude shoulder for years. Today we went a further along the ridge than in previous years and skied a slightly more mellow slope than the main slide paths. We think the tracks are wolverine but we're not 100% sure.
We've skied past the bottom of Mushroom People at least 50 times. That's a conservative guess. It had never crossed our minds even once to ski it. That was stupid. It's fricken' great. With interesting terrain, wonderful views, and a short approach.
Nick shot some video. I'm the one with the yellow pack. It reminds me that I still have much to learn about this whole parallel (vs telemark) turn thing.
I'm throwing in these final two photos just as my own personal reminder in the future.
They were taken looking down into the valley. The normal skin track parallels the trim line that runs from left to right in the center of the photo. The second photo is a zoom of the first one. See those bent trees in the second photo?
Yeah. And I'm pretty sure those bent trees are new this year. Even without the photos it's obvious that avalanches run across the valley bottom: giant avalanche path above, no trees. Duh. But like I mentioned we've probably skied through there 50 times or more. Rarely if ever giving it a thought. I guess my point is that we used to give it a thought.
I mean the chances are slim, right? It won't come down that far while we are crossing that run out. Million to one. But if I'm right about those trees then it did in fact come down right across the skin track and it happened just a few weeks ago.
Where else are we letting our guard down? These reminders are good.
In 17 years we'd never skied once at Christiana Trees. Now this was our 3rd time in less than a month. Our excuse this time was the need for a shorter day for Henry and Jason who hadn't been out much this season and there are lots of different options here. You'd think that after receiving something like 2 meters of snow in the past couple of weeks that the skiing would be exceptional. Surprisingly today wasn't nearly as good as our previous visits. The wind had knocked down the tree bombs making the snow much more variable. Timing is everything. Great views today though.
An easy day at the Fingers with Ross and Sarah Mae. It was Ross's first real ski day of the season. He's just getting over an injury and really needed to take it easy. Something quite foreign to him. It was snowing like mad with a temperature just above freezing. Possibly the wettest ski day we've ever had. We wouldn't have been much wetter if we'd jumped in the lake. Even the photos are wet. I'm surprised the trusty Cannon survived. The upper reaches of The Fingers were just a few degrees colder which kept the snow nice and light but our clothes were so wet that it stuck to us like glue.
