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 Red Mountain on the way to Island Lake Lodge this year, with a day at Fernie in-between. Island Lake Lodge is a phenomenal experience. Over 7,000 acres of privately owned terrain. Total luxury all the way: rooms, lodges, food, service, bar, wine, and spa. Three brand new cats this year. Newly gladded runs. Our guides this year were excellent, and the pow was plentiful.

Over the whole trip I think the high temp was -10c. Last day was -22c. A little new snow on the third night, but not much. Mostly clear the entire time, we hunted down the untracked powder from the last storm that dumped over 30cm on the entire area. Snow quality was excellent the entire time: super light and fluffy, with a little wind slab here and there.

We filled a whole cat this time with our own crew of 12 guys. It was a great group and we racked up more vertical than ever before at ILL (averaged 15,703ft and 12 runs per day instead of 13,373ft and 10.63 runs per day over two previous trips with random people in the cat.)

Overall: 62,810ft in 48 runs over 4 days.

Day 4 – Island Lake Lodge

Mostly clear with high clouds, and quite cold. Every now and then a cloud would roll through.

Day 5 – Island Lake Lodge

Nice and clear again.

Day 6 – Island Lake Lodge

Low clouds here and there. We had some fun burning down two dead trees on one of the runs. They consider it a good way to remove fuel for potential forest fires in the summer… that, and it’s just fun.

Day 7 – Island Lake Lodge

Not much to say at this point, except that it was -22c. Still found great tracks on the last day.

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We spent 4 days at Island Lake Lodge in late January after a day and a half at Fernie Alpine Resort. Fernie was nice, with decent snow (and even a bit of pow) on the top half of the mountain and a little firmer on the bottom half. We rode long and hard even though we were there for a brief period of time.

Island Lake Lodge was fantastic as usual. Deep, light powder for 4 days. Fresh snow the first 3. We rode some runs that hadn’t seen tracks all year. The lodging, food, bar, spa, and service were once again amazing. We had the same great tail guide as last year, Steve, and our lead guide Wayne was excellent.

We spent 4 days at Island Lake Lodge in late January after a day and a half at Fernie Alpine Resort. Fernie was nice, with great snow on the top half of the mountain and hard pack/ice on the bottom half. We rode long and hard even though we were there for a brief period of time. They opened Cedar Bowl on our second day there, and normally the conditions there would warrant a detailed report with pics and video. But the experience at Island Lake Lodge set a new standard…

It’s probably impossible to really convey just how great Island Lake Lodge was. Deep, light, cold smoke powder for 4 days. 50cm of new on the second day. Bottomless. Tight trees. Glades. Open fields. Runs that hadn’t seen tracks since December. Temps never got above about -5c. Sun 3 of the 4 days. The accommodations, food, bar, and service are 5 star total luxury. The massages at the spa every day were blissful. The cats clean, comfortable, and fast. The guides top-notch and super fun to hang out with.

The pics and video immediately below will give you and idea of the conditions. There are some pics and video of a huge slide they triggered heli-bombing on the first morning below.

Video of Mike following Scott (8mb)

Heli-bombing

On the first morning they took an opportunity to do some heli-bombing of their ridge line. It was the first time they’d seen it in over two weeks. These photos and video show a large slide they triggered in a high-alpine bowl. It was amazing to see in person… I’ll probably never see something like it again.

FYI, these pictures are huge. Be patient, and click on the “full size” link to see the details.

Video of the slide (3.8mb)

“Mike-Jacques”

So, it turns out that for some strange reason if you leave me alone behind a video camera and I get bored something a little odd happens. I end up imitating Jacques Cousteau with a stupid fake French accent. I don’t know why… I only vaguely remember watching some of his shows on TV when I was a kid. But, for better or worse, it happens. It turns out I got a little bored waiting for Scott and Bill to come through a specific spot one day. It turned out they ended up a little right of where we expected them, and I got bored waiting for them with the video camera. The result is the video below. It’s fairly amusing…

Jacques.wmv (13.2mb)