My late friend Chris Hansen gave me the advice you shouldn’t work on your birthday. I took his advice and took off to Joffre to climb and ski a few peaks.
On the skin up Anniversary I saw a heli fly overhead with a basket. I got to the Aussie couloir and started booting up, I looked back and saw tracks on the NW face of Matier. Weird, no one was up here, Half way up a group of four started skiing towards the couloir. I couldn’t believe it, they got a heli drop on Matier. I waited because I didn’t want to break trail for a heli group.The group caught up to me and they mentioned they we’re heading for the Joffre couloir.I was on my own so I decided to join them, No harness or gear but the snow was much better on that side.
No rappel was needed and Andre dropped in first, I was left 5th and not much snow remained, there was a few patches of new snow, but quite a few turns on icy conditions.
I had left some gear at the base of the Aussie, so I had to tour back up the baking Anniversary
glacier, I got back to my gear and cooked some soup and fell asleep for an hour. I felt refreshed when I woke up and started skinning towards Matier, I wanted to put a 10,000 foot day in.
Apparently one of the heli droppers tomahawked down the NW face of Matier and lost his helmet camera.Conditions we’re setting up with some cloud cover and cooler temperatures. So I climbed Matier and skied some boot top pow on the NW face. With energy to spare and time. I took off towards Slalok, which was my original plan. So I b-lined it for the summit and really put the hammer down. I arrived around 6pm on the summit. I tested the top of the face, the corn was set up and it was a wicked velvet run down the stonecrop face.
Joffre Couloir
Another peak bagger
Drop in
Matier NW face
Stonecrop Face
Random stats
Asc 10,400
27km
14:11
Skier: Andy Traslin
