Mt. Niblock April 27 2008

Well a great spring tour up Mt. Niblock. We had an early start and a tricky parking spot gave us a good jump on the day. A few hundred meters in to the tour I spotted some fresh bear tracks I thought that was really cool but just a little further down the trail we got to the train tracks and saw the bear eating grain, we were a good safe distance away so we watched for a minute and continued on up. About an hour further along the trail we got up in to the rock band and saw two beautiful mountain goats this was a great sighting. Wow we saw two rare and cool animals I know at this point it was going to be a great day. On our way down we passed 7 other people coming up our skin track. I just laughed as we skied the best lines down. Even though the skiing was not that great it is still rewarding to lay down the first track and leaving everyone else with sloppy seconds.

Little Willow Stool

Log benches April

A new hobby to make a little money if you know any one looking for some log work please let me know I can build most things it will just take some time as I am cutting the tress as I go.

Things you can do when you have no work!

Bow to Yoho April 10-14 2008

Another walk in the mountains
Bow to Yoho Traverse April 10-14, 2008
Greg, Allen, Jeff

Day 1 We skied across Bow lake staring at 9:30am after the vehicle shuffle. A normal slog up to the Bow hut then we started out on the actual traverse. We made our way up onto the glacier, as we were going skiing across the ice field we made a last minute decision to ski Mt Rhonda. It was a great little detour and the ski off the top was quite good, and took us right down to the glacier leading to Mt Collie where we decided that would be a great place to camp for the night. After arriving at the base we decide that it would be the best to continue up the Collie icefalls to get up high to put us in good position for the next crux early the next morning need less to say we were quit tired by the time we got to camp and got everything set up.

Hight gain 4900 ft

Decent 2010 ft

Time 7.5hr

Day 2 Well as per usual on the Wapta we woke up to a complete white out you could not see much of anything so we made breakfast and took some barring off the map and stared the white out navigation portion of the trip. We were lucky as we got to the decent at Des Poilus col the sun came out and gave us some light to see the line down this was a saving grace, I don’t know how we would have descended that with out some visibility. From there we continued towards Isolated col but dew to many recent avalanches we decided to avoid Isolated col and do the Whaleback ridge decent. This option is good but is no treat it offered lots of route finding issues, but the sun was shining and we had lots of fun figuring it out.

Hight gain 1600 ft
Decent 4340 ft
Time 6.5hr

Day 3 Up early and headed up to ski the Vise President (10,058 ft). The day started with a slight hang over but after a few minutes at a quick pace we were feeling great we skinned up to president pass in no time. We had a look around the wind was blowing very strong and we were not to keen to go much further but after a few minutes of rest we stared the assent of vise president it was full winter conditions cold and windy but we made it to the summit. A quick decent and we were back at the hut for lunch 11:45am.
Hight gain 3650 ft
Decent 3650 ft
Time 4.5hr

Day 4 The long ski out 23km of relatively flat skiing in snow and rain but we made it down in 4hr 25min good time considering the isothermal snow conditions.

Hight gain 510 ft
Decent 3180 ft
Time 4.25hr
Off to the coffee shop.

Commonwealth Ridge April 6 2008

Well we had a great spring tour out in K-country. Heather and I skinned up Commonwealth ridge were we got some good views and some good spring turns. The day started off a little rough but we managed to pull it off. Heather showed up in the parking lot with only here tight sweat pants, no ski pants, I think at this point she was done for the day but with a little sweet talking we were off skiing. As you can see she still managed to make some good turns and did not look like to much of a gorb. YA YA. Well all and all a fun day out.

Another day at the Office April 2 2008

Chad took some great photos I thought I would share them.

The photo of the stump is showing some re-bar that was stuck in the middle of the tree.