Hello again friends,
Hope everyone is keeping safe. My mom has been informing me about the COVID situation in India which is worsening and that the vaccines have not been effective in mitigating the disease spread and preventing infection amongst the vaccinated individuals either. Sticking to our protocols is the only reliable tool in our arsenal that we know we have.
Sunrises are stunning to look at and when the conditions are just perfect, I can’t resist taking a picture even if I have seen the sun rise at the same location before.
Yet another beautiful sunrise
Obviously, I am very lucky that I am able to do this course but one of the more underrated moments is when I sit down to write my weekly newsletter. I get to take in this view while I reflect on the past week!
We just had a fresh dumping of snow today
Mother Nature has been our friend on this course so far (hopefully not jinxed by saying that). We got warm temps and clear weather for the most part during the ice climbing section and a dumping of snow and lower temperatures as we came into the ski section!
Ski resort day
We woke up on the first day of the section with a massive dumping of snow the night before with more snow continuing to fall.
Best feeling waking up to fresh snow
This was a day for the instructors to figure out the ski skills of the group. By far I was the weakest skier of the group and while expected, is never a fun place to be in! I had rented skis that I had never used before and had not skied in about 6 years so was completely overwhelmed. However, the instructors Grant and Larry helped me deal with the situation and helped me through feeling more accustomed to the skis again. It was nice to be back at the ski hill though and brought up some nostalgic memories of skiing with my close friends in college.
Ski tour day
The following day we headed up to a mountain called Black Prince. While we didn’t go up to the summit, we used the region to practice our avalanche rescue drills and ski touring for our upcoming trip.
The road heading up to the trailhead is a rough one. While Grant was our primary guide, Pat was our secondary guide and our van driver for the day and he was quite the character. On the ride to the trailhead, he essentially spoke non-stop for 30 mins and had no dearth of chatter at any point during the day. He drove us down that bumpy road at 110 km/h screaming that it is a smoother ride if we go faster over the bumps. And while that may be true, it was a roller coaster at the back with the sliding on snow and the hard bumps. A ride to remember!
Getting ready for out avalanche rescue drill
Grant looking up at Black Prince
It was a great day out. We had fresh powder to ski on, I crashed on the way down like 3 times including inventing a new tree hook stopping technique. Grant says I should patent it - its quite simple really. If you think you’re going too fast, just stick your leg out and hopefully you hook onto a tree to bring you to a stop - extremely effective but would not recommend.
Ski tour expedition
The next few days were spent prepping for the expedition and then heading out. Given my performance over the past few days, I was extremely nervous but my course mates are great - they helped me calm my nerves. We started off right next to the Sunshine ski hill (where we went for our ski day)
You might be wondering what ski touring means. Essentially, we use special skis - they use a different kind of bindings for your shoes that let you transition from ski to walk mode. The ski mode operates like traditional downhill skis and the walk mode lets you walk around with the skis and even uphill when you add put skins on the bottom. The skins let the skis slide forward but not back on snow. This allows you to gain elevation and when you decide to ski down, you simply transition the skis to ski mode and then you can ski down like normal.
A lot of our time was spent transitioning from ski to walk mode and vice versa
Our plan was to ski up the Healy Creek Trail to the Monarch Ramparts which is the ridge line of Monarch mountain. Sadly the entire time we were up there, the cloudy skies prevented us from getting a clear picture of this scenic mountain.
Looking up at the Ramparts which are visible but the Monarch barely visible behind the clouds
We spent the first day getting to camp and setting it up. Once we got the kitchen going, everyone got excited and we started cooking. Much of our time during the mornings and evenings was spent melting snow into water for cooking and filling up our bottles.
We spent some time setting up our kitchen where we spent most of our trip down time melting water
Grant and Tak were our guides for this trip and they were awesome. Grant met his wife Meagan on Everest and had so many amazing personal stories
The next day was spent skiing around the area and exploring the monarch ramparts. We spent a lot of time on the previous days discussing the avalanche risks which we concluded were low where we would ski. I spent a lot of my time wiping out skiing downhill and then spending more time going uphill. It was extremely tiring! But I was able to see gorgeous landscapes while at the top - a teaser for the upcoming sections.
Part of the Monarch became visible later during the day
Skiing along side the towering snow covered trees which was the norm for our ski in and out
We spent most of yesterday enjoying a hearty breakfast of eggs and hash browns with some bacon and then skiing via the Healy creek trail. I fell numerous times on the way out but I managed to get out somehow and without any injuries. Super happy about that! Also Grant, our guide, said that I should be good enough for the following sections of skiing and I am excited that I can fully partake!
Today is our rest day to organize our things, recover from our weekend activities and get ready for our trip starting on Wednesday. Next week will be our AST 2 (avalanche safety training level 2) which will be done while backcountry camping.
Overall its been a relatively rough week with my skiing skills holding me back a bit and exhausting me more than others because of poor technique. In addition, it has been a fight against my internal negative voice which has been draining a bit mentally as well. Still an awesome week which included lots of learning and looking forward to the next week!
Thanks for reading! Stay safe and look out for the next email next week!
– G