Monkey

I went sledding with the guys near Salmon la Sac on Saturday. It was a great day, with lots of adventuring around the area going from bowl to bowl, with lots of single-track along the way. Had some good climbs, and I spent some time trying to learn to turn my sled in a tight circle by dumping it on its side but I didn’t really get it this day. I’ll try again next time. Overall a good day. Here’s some pictures, though none of them are of me!

I went sledding with the OMLB crew up near Gold Creek on Saturday. Good times were had by all. Got a lot of sledding and boarding in. High clouds and light snow now and then with about a foot of fresh snow. Lots of sledding plus me being out of shape equals lots and lots of sore muscles today. Totally worth it, though. Got to learn to ride the sled a bit more. Some fine snowboard runs. Hung out with some good guys. A Saturday well spent.

Helen and I went snowmobiling today up in Snoqualmie Pass, near Gold Creek. We had a good time taking it easy and riding the roads up to the radio tower and back. Helen broke her sled in (it was brand new) and had a blast. Very light snow most of the time. We got some Super Nachos at the bar in North Bend on the way home, too.

This was my fourth tour at Island Lake Lodge with my buddies Bill, Greg, Scott, and Peter. I’m calling this Best Tour Ever, at any cat skiing operation I’ve been to, period. The snow wasn’t the deepest by any stretch, perhaps 6-12” of light fluff over a base of packed powder. But the snow quality was excellent, and stayed that way with -10C temps the whole time. What made the trip so great was the terrain we were able to access, the bluebird days, a good group to ride with, and wonderful guides. The stability of the snowpack was better than any time any of us had seen there before, and Bill, Greg, and Scott were on their 10th or 11th tours. The snow safety crew started opening fresh terrain the first morning and kept it up the entire tour. Our group pretty much hit every new opening first (there are three groups at the area each day), and we made it into all of the high alpine drops. We got to hit a lot of great chutes, and we took a 30 min hike up Big White (see pics below) on the 3rd day. Everything was fair game, and we tracked out almost everything we saw. We got to do runs that our guides hadn’t been able to ski in years, and it was sunny and clear 3 of the 4 days. 

Our crew was only 5 guys this year, so we got grouped up with 7 other random people in the cat, which is always a crapshoot. Everyone ripped though, and we ended up racking up over 63k of vertical over the 4 days. We lost two of the guys after the first day. They were part of a group of 14, and they decided to pack all 14 into a 12 person cat for the rest of the tour so they could ride with their friends. Too bad for them… our group was faster! The 3 guys from Denver had only booked 3 days, so we were down to 7 on the last day. Then half way through the guy from Boston gave up due to a bad knee so we were down to 6 for the last few runs.

Our lead guide was Corrie and Candice was our tail guide. I had a blast following Corrie… that guy laid down huge beautiful arcs and it was a genuine pleasure to follow closely behind him. Candice was super helpful the entire time and always had a good tip for a good alternate line.

All of the other amenities were the shizznizzle as usual: food, drink, service, the nightly massages in the spa, etc.

Here’s a trail map.

There’s a lot of pictures here, and it’s just a fraction of what I took. The shots of me riding are courtesy of the photographer that rode with us the second day, Matt Kuhn. Captions on the pics give more details where necessary. Most of these are scenery shots since my camera just isn’t very good for action shots. Some of the other guys got a bunch of better shots, and we took a ton of HD video and some standard def helmet cam video. When Bill gets some of that edited I’ll see about posting some of it up.

I went to Fernie Alpine Resort for a couple of days on the way to Island Lake Lodge with Bill, Greg, Scott, and Peter. We stayed in the Lizard Creek Lodge which was nice as usual. We roll in around lunch time on Tuesday and the idea is to warm up for ILL by riding Tuesday afternoon and all day Wednesday. I’ve been nursing a bum knee, though, so I took it pretty easy and called it a day about half way through each time. Snow quality up top was very nice: light, but well tracked. The bottom third to half of the mountain was crap, though: clearly rain affected. On Wednesday, based on some friendly tips, we ventured out of bounds into Fish Bowl where we found plenty of quality untracked powder in the upper half of the bowl. The bottom was crap, but it was worth it so we lapped it again. All-in-all, a good warm up for ILL.