Monkey

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.

I went to Crystal today with Bill, Simon, and Peter. This was my first day snowboarding this season (I’ve been slacking) and it turned out to be a fine day. There was, well, a blizzard at Crystal. NWAC says it snowed 11” while we were there, and I believe it. It also shows that the winds gusted to 31mph mid-morning, and I think that’s conservative. Up on the ridges it oscillated between low visibility and pure white out depending on the wind. But down off the ridge on the slopes back towards the Rainier Express it was glorious. Nice, deep, fluffy powder, perhaps 18”+ deep, and reasonable enough visibility to fly down the mountain. I choked a bit on powder more than once. Coverage is excellent for this time of season, and good for anytime of the year. We spent most of the time lapping the Rainier Express, and then took a run down Exterminator then stopped for lunch. Exterminator was good, but much more tracked out than I expected… lots of people had the same idea we did. I didn’t go back out after lunch… my legs were just too tired, as I’ve done nothing to prepare for the season. Peter went back out for a half hour or so, and Simon and Bill stayed out for another hour before we packed it in and headed home.

I was pretty pleased with how my left knee feels after today. I damaged it last spring, it turns out pretty badly. It needs surgery that will keep me off the leg for 6 weeks, and then take 6 months to rehabilitate to the point where I can ride again. I’m putting that off, though, on the theory that some boarding is better than no boarding. I’ll have it done in the spring. It felt fine in the powder, but in firm bumps it was extremely painful. I’m gonna have to pick and choose my days carefully this season, but now I know that I have some fine days ahead of me this season.

A few pics from today. I didn’t take many since, well, it was friggin freezing, windy, and hard to see.

We spent the week at Whistler and rode Monday thru Friday. Overall, there wasn’t much new snow, but the quality of what was there from about mid-mountain up was really quite nice. It stayed nice and cold in the alpine the entire week, so the snow stayed soft. Wednesday was most excellent: sunny and calm, and what new snow they did have had been blown smooth by the wind the night before. The Peak chair on Whistler was the word of the day and we had many fresh turns. Good times. The other days were a mix of sunbreaks and clouds, with the clouds hitting the mountain in different spots. Coverage is very good pretty much everywhere on both mountains down to the bottom. The lower mountain refroze every night, so you had to wait for the sun to hit it and soften it again before it was worth it… I took Peak to Creek at the end of most days so it was slush by the time I hit the bottom each time. Who really rides the lower mountain there anyway beyond that? The sun came out again for me on Friday and my last run from the peak back to the room was perfect.

We stayed in the First Tracks Lodge in Creekside again, and as usual is was very nice. We ended up in an end unit this time and it was huge. We’re pretty sure it was bigger than our first few apartments The new Peak to Peak gondola made getting to Blackcomb from Creekside wonderful. We left the car parked the entire week, and we rode Blackcomb more than we have in the past. We rode in one of the “glass bottom” gondolas on one trip. I was a little disappointed… I was expecting the entire floor to be clear, but it’s just a small section in the middle, which I suppose is more practical.

I went to Crystal today with Bill. NWAC telemetry said they had 14″ in the last 24 hours, and I’d say it was fairly accurate. Better yet, it accumulated well below freezing… below 10F or so. The high temp up top while we were there was 18F. It was super light and fluffy all day, and fairly fantastic. We had an excellent day. Many fresh tracks were had, even late into the day. We lapped Sunnyside for a bit under Rex, then headed over to Northway and proceeded to find joy on every run. We finished up with a run down Exterminator where I found a few untracked turns in the trees. The place was pretty crowded, but we still found lots of solitude on Northway except for a brief period when the lift line got stunningly huge (see the last picture). Where the hell did all of those people come from? I’ve never seen it anywhere near that big. Luckily they didn’t come back, and the line disappeared again like usual. The second pic shows the late morning goods still waiting for us. The little bit of yellow blur in the cloud of pow is Bill.