Touring

After letting the touring set up that I have aquired this season gather dust for the first part of the winter, I was finally able to put the gear to use on my first touring day ever at the beginning of February with Andrew. The weather looked like it could go either way, get sunny or cloud over, but we got lucky and caught some sun up in the Duffy, north of Pemberton.



Looking over at Joffre


Andrew took me up the most convoluted route through the trees to get up to the top. Basically it involved getting cliffed out in reverse to the point where we had to take off our skis and bootpack up part of it. Since it was my first experience touring I am pretty stoked that I actually survived the walk up. By the time we reached the top, I was exhausted, but not tired enough to enjoy the ski down.

Finally made it to the top!





A much easier walk



A week later,  Landon, Tom, Ollie and I took a walk out to Fissile in Singing Pass. This was a much easier skin up, especially since we got to take the chairlift up into the alpine first. The tour out to Fissile was the first time that I got to try skin skiing, Ollie's favourite activity. In order to save time on some of the smaller downhills, we left our heals unclipped and skins on. You don't move very quickly but its pretty exciting. Don't forget to lean back or you fall on your face!

It was a very long walk though, about four hours out to the top which involved a fairly serious bootpack straight up to the peak. When we finally got to the top, we were running behind schedule with the light so we didn't have much time to rest. The run down was awesome, we skied saddle chute which had a steep, narrow entrance then opened up into a huge, steep bowl where I could finally get my skis up to speed. I have been very impressed with the Katanas so far, they are heavy skis but they feel great when you get them going.



Ollies line (summit chute) on the left, Tom, Landon and my line (saddle chute) on the right



It was a bit of a race against the light on the way back out, another two hours that involved a bit of skinning and the ski out on the singing pass trail. Luckily it was uneventful and we made it back to the locker room just in time. What a great day! 



Landon on the hike out



Getting the skins back on