Pebble Creek Cabin

After an unexpected invitation on a family trip and some hasty schedule reworking so that I could leave two days after confirming I would go, I arrived at the Whistler Heliport to board a helicopter that would take me and the Drinnan family to Pebble Creek Cabin for 8 days. Seeing as how I had only met part of the family, an had no idea of their existence until just days before the start of the trip, I was nervous to what the week was going to have in store for me, living in an enclosed space with four people I barely knew.

The trip materialized by chance on a day trip out to cowboy ridge. A family friend of my touring buddy came along for the ski and was talking about the trip they were going to do out to a cabin north of Pemberton. Since they were getting dropped off by helicopter, they were looking for one more person to fill the helicopter. I checked my schedule when I got home and called her the next day. I was in!

Pulling an Ingrid Backstrom

Forty minutes in the helicopter and we were dropped off near the foot of the Pebble Creek Glacier, about 100m away from the cabin. The weather was great and we got some great views of the surrounding mountains. Too bad we didn't have sun for basically the rest of the trip. We took advantage of the good visibility and went for a quick run down a slope that we named day 1 while we scouted out lines that we wanted to ski on later days.

Looking back at our tracks (and the tracks of the guys that left when we arrived) down day 1

Aside from our first two days, the weather was pretty uncooperative, with wind, snow and cloud which resulted in very flat light. Many of the areas that we had looked at in interest on the first night were not skiable due to their aspect. Anything south facing was garbage snow due to sun crust. Luckily for us, there was so much terrain to explore that we never ran out of stuff to ski. There were so many areas that we didn't get a chance to get to that I would love to come back and ski. There were some HUGE zones out there!

Top of the ridge during a rare sunny break

The Drinnans

The boys built a couple of jumps outside the cabin on the down days when we didn't go touring. We had a few good jump sessions which ended in shin bang for me and Marty almost landing on his mom and brother with a switch 180. It was a good way to kill some time!

Marty on the tree tap

Graham with a tree grab

On the second last day of the trip, Andy (Marty and Graham's dad) and I went back up to the highest point that we had been to during the trip so I could check out a line that had been bugging me all week. It was a narrow chute down a rocky ridge. Actually there were 3 of them but one, a dogleg, had caught my eye. I had to boot pack up along a cornice and over the top of the peak to see if I could get in around the back side because the front had lots of rocky cliffs that were not passable. The weather came in as I was up there so Andy wasn't able to see where I was and couldn't help guide me to where I wanted to be. I ended up down climbing a pretty steep face with my skis on my pack to see if I could get into a chute (which turned out to be a different one than the one I wanted to ski) but the face ended in a cliff above the skiable area. I had no choice but to climb back up and go ski the least exciting of the three chutes. This climb took me a very long time since it was so steep. Finally, I got back to the top and signaled to Andy that I was dropping in. About 10 turns down, the snow underneath me fractured, triggering a class 1 slide that started to pull me down the hill. I managed to traverse over to the rocks and stop before it picked up any speed but it was definitely a wake up call. I regrouped with Andy and we checked out how far the slide had traveled. Lower down, the one I had triggered had run out but released another slide that was much larger, class 2 or more with about a 2ft crown line. Scary! I was pretty happy to finish the day and head back to the cabin after that.

The crown line of the second slide

The next day was clean up day since the heli was coming to pick us up around 1pm. It had been a successful trip. I was pretty stoked to get home and shower, I know we all smelled pretty bad after 8 days.

Here comes the heli!

The pebble creek cabin