Hello again!
Hope everyone is doing well!
I just returned from our biggest backcountry ski trip of the course. The trip has been christened a ‘Ski Mountaineering’ trip because the main goal was to ascend peaks and ski off of them.
Our plan for this trip was getting up to Aster Lake campground and then attempt either Mt Joffre which is an 11,000 fter or Warrior Mountain, or both. Additionally, we wanted to get in some more back country skiing.
Our hike in was one of the most arduous things I have done in my life. In past updates, I spoke about using skis in walk mode with skins to climb up slopes. Well, if the slope is too steep and your skins aren’t the best quality, your feet can suddenly slip out from under you and cause you to face plant onto the ground. And that’s exactly what happened to me multiple times including the time that I nearly ended up in a tree well and flailed around for a while before I got out.
Pictured here is the Upper Kananaskis Lakeand the Hidden Lake below that. We had to navigate the lakes and onto the upper bench that this picture was taken from.
It was an incredibly long day - we got lost for a while, had to navigate extremely steep and challenging terrain while visibility was constantly dropping and the wind was howling. It was cold and we were running out of water and when we showed up at our campsite around 8 pm, the sun was setting. Moving quickly in the dark, we set up our tent, built a makeshift kitchen and then cooked before sleeping around 11. It was quite an ordeal but we were finally here and ready to start the trip.
The next day we spent some time adding finishing touches to our group kitchen, picking up the fallen outhouse for our ‘business’ and just general camp stuff before we did some crevasse rescue training and kept it as a pretty light day.
Grant the guide teaching us
And of course we had a look around camp and the setting was absolutely unreal and I had a great feeling about the rest of the course.
Our glorious poop place
Our guides tent
While this was a light day, the next day would not be. We were going for Warrior mountain and going for the summit. Our approach was fairly tricky and we had to navigate the lurking hazards from the high winds and precipitation but overall it was pretty straightforward.
Warrior Mountain
Reaching the summit was an awesome experience and the setting was just unreal. Even though Warrior was not the tallest mountain, it still provided an epic experience and a summit! Always good to successfully bag a summit. The final section was so steep that we had to leave our skis behind and climb it up. There were also lurking rocks under the snow which we had to watch out for.
Eventually we skied the entire line down Warrior and Grant our guide suggested one simple tweak to my skiing which was to lean into the slope rather than away from it. That little tweak changed everything for me. I was able to suddenly start skiing, my confidence soared and for the first time on the trip, I was having real fun. It was awesome!
Skied some great lines over the next few days
The next two days were spent ski touring around the area and for the first time in the trip I had a day where I felt that I get why people ski and understood the beauty and balance in managing the uncertainty of technically ‘falling down a slope’. Over the two days I was able to ski up to 45 deg slopes which is really really steep. I found myself imagining myself actually executing turns and not just falling before I did it and positive thinking reinforced my improved competence.
There was the unfortunate incident where I fell at the start of the longest slope that I would have skied and the ski disengaged and took its own path down the entire slope. In spite of my efforts to use the only remaining ski with me to ski down, it was unsuccessful and I had to sadly walk down the slope.
However, nothing was able to dampen my sense of accomplishment from the trip and awesome time I had for the time on this ski trip. Often times we tend to compare ourselves to others in an effort to improve ourselves or understand where we stand. I think most people know that such thinking is counter productive to true growth with the right intentions. Luckily for me, I was so far below the skills of everyone else that all I could compare to was my past self. The guides were awesome and my team mates were encouraging and I was able to see a significant amount of learning over this section. And even though I was not close to the others in ski ability, I had grown and pushed through the discomfort which I am proud of.
Here are some more pictures that capture how epic our playground was.
We saw a mountain goat!
Eventually the sun came out and we built a little couch to hang out. Note the chess playing. The group kitchen was among the trees behind to shelter from the wind and snow.
Currently I am doing the wilderness first responder course and the next update may take longer since I don’t want to bore you with classroom details :) If something cool comes up I will send out an update! Hope you are enjoying these updates.
Take care everyone, stay safe and talk soon!
– G