First Day of Sping, March 20

First day of spring and not very spring-like!

Since mid February the coast has been pounded by a series of storms, associated with cold temperatures and big dumps of snow. Last week Grouse had 167 cm, Whistler 170 cm and Baker comes in on top with 110 inches in 6 days (279 cm!).

Nice turns on Mt Seymour

Unfortunately these storms often came just before (or on) weekends, making for rather harsh skiing conditions. Despite this Pete and I skied Whistler in 50 km/h winds. With another friend I got stuck on a chair at Seymour on a cold and windy night for half an hour. Unfortunately, heavy snowfall combined with high winds also make for tricky avalanche conditions, so we haven’t been out in the backcountry quite as often as we would have liked. But early in March we got some nice runs at Hemlock Resort (and found 50-60 cm fresh pow behind it) and later in March did a moon-light tour at Hollyburn and hit some sweet snow in the whiteout conditions at First Pump (Mt Seymour).

Now forecasts are for warmer weather by this Friday, maybe spring is starting after all?

From BC River Forecast Centre

From Canadian Avalanche Association

Snowy Owls - March 10

Snowy owls migrate south from their arctic habitat in average only every four years (this is called an ‘irruptive migration’). They do this when the lemming population, their main food source, crashes. This year many owls came south, and some of them landed at Boundary Bay near Vancouver. Hope they found enough food to fill their tummies.

Here are some pictures from my visit with the owls. 

February 12 - End of Winter?

Snowdrops, winter aconites (Winterling, Eranthis hyemalis) and spring snowflakes (Märzenbecher, Leucojum vernum) were out in full force and flower when we came back from our ski trip on February 12th. Is the end of winter in sight?

Trophy Cabin, Feb 5-11

Although we come to Clearwater and Wells Grey Park every summer to paddle the river, we have never been here in winter. Time for a visit, so we signed up for a week of back country skiing at Trophy cabin. This is also the first week-long trip where we actually skied in (after an hour long ride in Ian’s heritage snowcat). The group we joined had fortunately also arranged for a heli-flight for food and bevies, so we were sufficiently covered in this department. We had bluebird days for the first half of the week, but no new snow, and the warmer than usual winter sun had done a number on the south facing slopes. But the area has plenty of north exposure, and avalanche conditions were at an all time low, so we explored steep chutes in area aptly named ‘Playground’ and treed glades of ‘Below Lookout Lake’ and 'Cleopatra'. Probably the steepest shots I have skied in the backcountry! The more ambitious skiers in the group set out to bag Trophy summit (in high winds and challenging alpine conditions) while Pete and I decided to play some more in fluffy tree-line powder. Other than skipping the alpine touring day, we ‘old folks’ did pretty well for elevation gains and powder runs (1300-1500 meter/day). Despite the exceptional stable snow conditions, several small and one larger slide were observed, presumably caused by cornice falls. The large one went all the way down to the valley floor and across where the summit team had skied the day before. Even in stable conditions there is always a 'Restrisiko'.

Alpine explorations

Trophy Cabin in the trees

Moonrise over the Monashees















The last couple of days clouds came in. Cloudbase was low so we were occasionally in the fog. We made the trek across the valley to Midmountain. The north-facing steep chutes looked great from our cabin window, but unfortunately the area is sled-accessible and the runs had already tracks in them. On the last day we stayed closer to the cabin and Pete and I did a sweet pillowy run down the east spine of Playground ridge. Not quite over-the-head blower powder, but we got on some cool steep runs with nice snow, had stable avy conditions and most importantly met a new crew of great powder-aficionados.