Sick Day: Fitzsimmons & Macbeth combo
Posted: Fri Mar 25, 2011 11:14 pm
I've started to interpret sun in the forecast as a big fat question mark. Mostly because they flopped back and forth for the Wednesday forecast between cloudy & sunny all week. But at 2pm on Tuesday they forecast "Mostly Sunny" for Wednesday, so I figured I'd gamble and take the risk of having a day with "my twisted view of sunshine". Somehow sun or snow conditions have stumped us for the past month, so a glimmer of hope is better than no hope at all.
3 weeks ago we skied the SW bowl of Cayoosh in a cloudy soup, the sky parted as we got near the bottom. Not so perfect timing.
Then we skied some heavy pow in the trees and I tried split boarding, which turned out to be a very damp and sweaty adventure thanks to getting stuck in deep snow (and hitting trees). Maybe I should learn to snowboard first.
Then on Sunday we had to turn around at the bottom of the 'good stuff' after a Cascade-style thwack starting at an elevation of 30ft.
So back to Wednesday
Me being my usual self, we didn't start skinning from the Whistler boundary till 9:30am. We ran into Sky's pal Max at Fissile as he waited for the rest of his group.
Maddy skinning towards Overlord around noon
Then the wind changed slightly and the question mark rolled in as we were summiting Fitzsimmons
We waited for a bit and ate some food to see if it would clear, but no such luck.
I convinced Maddy to ski off the summit. I helped spot her as we side stepped through the small rock band, but she didn't need any convincing to crank some turns in the steep pow after
More goodness awaited us on the North Face
Then the sun came out again as we skinned up towards Macbeth. It had actually been a pretty busy day thus far. We saw 2 more people cross over to Iago, completing what I would assume is a day trip on the Spearhead Traverse. But then we were alone again.
The snow was variable on the climb up to Macbeth. The first couple turns off the summit were wind hammered, but then conditions improved slightly
Maddy's skiing seems to be improving at an exponential rate
A cute picture from the bottom of the Curtain Glacier. You know you have a 'sickness' when the first thing you see is Fitzsimmons in the background.
It was interesting skinning up Russet Creek while it was light outside; something I hadn't experienced until now. We followed frozen skin tracks back to Cowboy Ridge to avoid skinning on the re-frozen bullet proof sun crust. The Singing Pass Trail is fast and filled in. Not even one creek open. Burgers & Beer preceded a few hours of sleep, before another early morning to make it back to Vancouver for work.
3 weeks ago we skied the SW bowl of Cayoosh in a cloudy soup, the sky parted as we got near the bottom. Not so perfect timing.
Then we skied some heavy pow in the trees and I tried split boarding, which turned out to be a very damp and sweaty adventure thanks to getting stuck in deep snow (and hitting trees). Maybe I should learn to snowboard first.
Then on Sunday we had to turn around at the bottom of the 'good stuff' after a Cascade-style thwack starting at an elevation of 30ft.
So back to Wednesday
Me being my usual self, we didn't start skinning from the Whistler boundary till 9:30am. We ran into Sky's pal Max at Fissile as he waited for the rest of his group.
Maddy skinning towards Overlord around noon
Then the wind changed slightly and the question mark rolled in as we were summiting Fitzsimmons
We waited for a bit and ate some food to see if it would clear, but no such luck.
I convinced Maddy to ski off the summit. I helped spot her as we side stepped through the small rock band, but she didn't need any convincing to crank some turns in the steep pow after
More goodness awaited us on the North Face
Then the sun came out again as we skinned up towards Macbeth. It had actually been a pretty busy day thus far. We saw 2 more people cross over to Iago, completing what I would assume is a day trip on the Spearhead Traverse. But then we were alone again.
The snow was variable on the climb up to Macbeth. The first couple turns off the summit were wind hammered, but then conditions improved slightly
Maddy's skiing seems to be improving at an exponential rate
A cute picture from the bottom of the Curtain Glacier. You know you have a 'sickness' when the first thing you see is Fitzsimmons in the background.
It was interesting skinning up Russet Creek while it was light outside; something I hadn't experienced until now. We followed frozen skin tracks back to Cowboy Ridge to avoid skinning on the re-frozen bullet proof sun crust. The Singing Pass Trail is fast and filled in. Not even one creek open. Burgers & Beer preceded a few hours of sleep, before another early morning to make it back to Vancouver for work.