Snopril - April 10/11

Work is somewhere down there

First Snovember, now Snopril! Cypress reports 127 cm fresh in the last 7 days. And what a weekend: Saturday beautiful pow (waist-deep on foot, over knee-deep on ski) at Needle Peak, even with the sun out it stayed cold and fluffy all day. Sunday, for a total change we went climbing. The moves feels still OK on 5.7s, even after climbing only once a year for the last three.


Just can't stop taking pictures

Pow at Needle Peak

Powder Easter Bunnies, April 2-4

Decisions, decisions! What to do for the first long weekend of the year?

Options are the traditional paddle trip to Oregon, flying in the Interior or slip back into winter mode and ski. Cold temperatures, fresh snow and a seat sale for the last weekend of operation at Monashee Powder Cats make the final decision easy – we are off for 3 days cat skiing.

We get excellent snow, meet great people to ski with (including a now 74 year old Floridian we met 2 years ago) and the same great service, delicious food and a hot tub in the snowstorm. The Easter Bunny wakes us with coffee and chocolate eggs on Sunday.

The guides are still a bit edgy about avalanche conditions. Just a couple of days ago a cornice triggered a major slide. We also hear many interesting stories about the sketchy conditions earlier this year, airbag deployments, ski cuts etc. Shows again how lucky we were with our Fairy Meadow trip.

Bridal Falls, March 6/7

How is this for a rational: rivers too low for paddling, no fresh snow for skiing in the last couple of months and a crappy weather forecast – so lets do the most weather sensitive activity and go flying?!

Guess after the reports of excellent conditions during the week the need for airtime for us weekend warriors was too great, and we did a couple of sled rides before and after rain showers. And I finally succeeded in capturing some more footage with my wing-cam (both the Mino and Vado have intermittent problems with freezing and not recording when left to themselves for longer periods of time).

Fairy Meadows, February 20 - 28

Lunch on Granite Glacier - Fairy Meadows Cabin is on the small forested bench (moraine) above Greg's head and the icefall

We spent an excellent week at Fairy Meadows cabin (north of Revelstoke and Golden, BC); lots of luck with weather and avalanche conditions! Bluebird skies for the first three days provided ample opportunity to explore the high country (Granite, Nobility, Echo, Gothics Glaciers) and cols and passes (Friendship, Pioneer) including an ascent of Sir Williams and to get some nice runs in. Visibility went downhill when new snow started falling midweek - time to look for pow in Swan Creek and Outpost trees.

Before the trip we were somewhat nervous about reports of touchy and unusual avalanche conditions all over the place. Remote slides set off by helicopters, snow cats and skiers running on slopes as low as 20 degrees angle, skiers triggering slopes that had already slid. But the group ahead of us skied aggressively and had seen little activity. We took it easy at first and later skied intermediate terrain without major incidents. But of course there are always exceptions. Among our 19 cabin-mates was a group of four young and keen couloir-droppers who managed to ski-cut what was maybe a 2.5 after skinning/boot-packing up a line. The slide wiped out their entire uptrack. Fortunately the ski-cut went well, but the kids stopped dropping couloirs for the rest of the week.

In summary, a great week of skiing with excellent alpine tours and somewhat limited tree skiing. But Fairy Meadows is not the place where you want to be stuck in poor visibility and/or bad avalanche conditions, so spring trips are probably a better bet.

More photos here


Fairy Meadows cabin (lower right) with Granite and Nobility Glaciers in the background


Friendship Col


Looking north from Sentinel Shoulder to Granite Glacier


Pete disappearing in pow of Swan Creek Trees