There and Back Again: A Brian Waddington Tale

This Christmas holiday, it was decided that we should try and avoid the craziness of Whistler and the long lift lines by escaping the the backcountry for a few days. Large amounts of snow before Christmas had us concerned about avalanche stability, weather and visibility but this turned out to be the least of our worries in the end. The skies were clear, the snow was stable and conditions were perfect for ski touring!

Getting stoked for winter!

Its November already! I don't really know where the last few months went but suddenly its dark at 4:30 and exams are looming. The good news is that the mountains are getting ready to ski! I have been building my ski stoke this month by getting my new gear all ready. Michael at Marker/Volkl hooked me up with some sweet gear that I can't wait to take out for a spin, including the 177 Volkl Nanuq with a Marker F12 binding for touring! Most excellent!

Some of the new gear

Howe Sound Crest Trail Trip Report

Elevation Profile. It doesn't look so bad on paper..

When David and Tyler started talking to me about doing the Howe Sound Crest Trail, I got really excited. I have a list of North Shore Peaks that I have been wanting to summit for a while and this seemed like the perfect way to get a couple of them in one go. Many people choose to do this hike in 2 days and it is possible to finish in one day if you move quickly over the 28km. We opted to do it more leisurely, starting after work on Friday and finishing Sunday, spending 2 nights on the trail. We figured that this would allow us to do some detours, such as hiking up Brunswick Peak, the tallest North Shore Mountain (just under 1800m). In the end, we didn't hike Brunswick, since the travel between the Lions and Brunswick Lake ended up being slower than 1km per hour due to some navigational errors.

Juan de Fuca Trip Report

The Juan de Fuca trail is a 47km marine trail that spans from China Beach to Botanical Beach on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It is farther south than the more popular West Coast Trail and is much different, according to Kyle, who has done both. The Juan de Fuca trail was originally used as a telegraph line maintenance trail. This trip was my first ever experience with a backpacking trip. I was pretty nervous as I had never done any hiking that lasted longer than 8 hours before, and definitely not with an overnight bag. I wasn't able to find a good pack for the trip so I ended up with an old backpack from the closet, the same bag Angela had traveled around Europe with a month earlier. Although it wasn't ideal, it fit everything (barely) and it didn't break during the trip, which surprised me a little.

The trip was part of a string of trips spanning 2 weekends and a week that I had off. Our first stop was Bowen Island for the notorious dock dance. After some waterskiing, dock dancing, boat stealing and croquet, Kyle and I hopped on the Nanaimo ferry early Monday morning to begin the trip.

Some extreme croquet action

Summer Adventures

This has been a summer like no other. I have taken a break from trying to ride my bike everyday (although I did ride quite a bit) and spent time enjoying some of the other fantastic sports on the North Shore. The break from school started out as not much of a break at all. Hours after my last final, I was in Vancouver General Hospital with Kyle who had lacerated his kidney biking at the Woodlot. Shortly after, Kyle moved home and I spent 3 frantic weeks studying for my MCAT which I wrote a week before the end of May. Man, it felt good to get that out of the way!

Boredom at VGH

Exploring the Duffy

With a limited amount of fresh snow at Whistler in the last few weeks, I have been feeling pretty uninspired with the skiing. A few backcountry trips changed that pretty quickly. My first proper touring trip of the season was out to Mt. Chief Pascal with Landon and Tristan. The freezing level had been jumping around all over the place and we knew we were going to have to get above 1700 metres if we wanted to find anything worth skiing and stick to really steep north facing slopes. We managed to find some good steep alpine chutes with great stability which allowed Landon to ski a really steep face over some decent exposure that was super cool. Other than the chutes, the snow was horrific with a crust layer that just grabbed onto your edges and wouldn't let go. It was a fun trip, but the ski back to the car was some of the worst skiing I have ever experienced!

Initially for my reading week I had high aspirations of a multi day over night backcountry trip out in the Duffy Lake Road area. Conflicts with time off work mixed with mediocre snow reduced the trip down to a one night expedition out to Snow Spider hut, however avalanche hazard for friday went through the roof overnight and we decided to play it safe and only do a one day trip. I called David repeatedly this morning to wake him up to tell him of our change of plans and invite him along. He didn't take much convincing once he was awake. It was Davids first real day of touring after his AST 1 and Landon and I wanted to try a new mountain, so we decided to head up Rohr, the mountain across the valley from Chief Pascal. It was an interesting walk straight up the mountain, following a skin track that took us through some pretty tight trees and tested Davids skills at kick turns for the first time. At the top, we dropped into a few steep chutes and had triggered a few shallow slabs which was extremely unnerving. All in all it was a successful day in the backcountry.

Happy David

Competition Recap

The first week of class at UBC started as David and I were uploading the Revelation gondola in Revelstoke for the first day of course inspection for the Freeski World Tour Qualifier. An uneventful drive up Tuesday afternoon had got us to town at a reasonable hour and despite leaving the city with nowhere to stay, we found ourselves as first time couch surfers. We spend our five day trip indulging in the amazing hospitality of our hosts, Chad and his roommates. The venue for the qualifier down separate reality was quite a bit less snowy than last time I had been in Revelstoke but the landings were just as flat as I remembered them. The qualifier went off early Thursday morning with high winds gusting at the top but somehow the visibility stayed good enough that the judges were able to see the whole course all day. I dropped in 23/23rd of the ladies who were hoping to qualify, an enormous number competing for very limited spots as there were already 16 prequalified girls in the comp for day 1 to be held on Friday.  The goal for the run was to stay on my feet and ski strong and fast, while opting for a safer line by avoiding the larger of the cliff bands. Unfortunately this choice didn't pay off as I placed 8/23 and only 4 girls moved on from the qualifier to Day 1 on North Bowl.