McGill Glades and a Broken Binding

"Uh-oh" said Brenda examining her binding.

It was the way she said it. A tone that immediately makes you stop what you're doing and wonder...Where are we? How long until dark?

The large screw cap for the lateral release adjustment on one of the heel pieces had backed out and disappeared. Along with the internal springs. There was nothing holding the actual binding to the post that remained mounted to the ski.

The situation wasn't too dire. Although we were as far from the trailhead as we were going to get that day, we had a few hours of daylight left, and Brenda could muddle her way back down in half telemark mode.

Resigned to a tedious ski out it was only an afterthought that we tried using a strap to lock the heel of her boot to that remaining post. Surprisingly it worked brilliantly. The lip at the top of the post kept the strap attached. Brenda later said that by the time we were half way down she'd almost forgotten that her binding was broken.

Christiana Trees

McGill Shoulder looked super busy so we headed in the direction of Christiana Trees where no one had yet broken trail. McGill would have been fine but it was nice to ski in the quiet glades.

Corbin

A fine day at Corbin. There were a couple of interesting events today.

The first was catching glimpses of a pine marten, or possibly two pine martens, slowly and inexorably pursuing a white rabbit. The rabbit made a few appearances, either dashing across the uptrack in full flight or slowly bouncing along beside us on the trail with a tired look on its face. The marten wasn't too far behind. We didn't see the end result but our friend Steve witnessed the denoument of a similar pursuit a few weeks ago. The rabbit didn't do so well.

The second was a large settlement we triggered while crossing a convex roll at tree line. Probably on one of the buried surface hoar layers lingering in the upper meter of the snow pack. It was interesting to note a series of cracks running from tree to tree into the distance. An extended column test gave us high numbered but conclusive result (ECTP30).

We were dubious about heading into any large terrain today anyway. This helped the decision. Instead we skied the margins of the main slide path and had a fun time.

Photo: Nick

Vaux Moraine

We followed up the fantastic start to the season in October by not skiing once in November. Provincial guidelines to avoid non-esential travel kept us away. It was frustrating to hear how good the conditions were from people who chose not to stay closer to home.

On this trip we stayed within our bubble of one and didn't visit any local business.

I'm looking forward to the day when an after ski beer at Mount Begbie feels normal again.

Nice day on the Vaux Moraine. It was busy! A familair refrain these days.