Thread: Whistler Stoke and Conditions - 2011/2012

Originally Posted by PhilM

Nice one on Asian Pussy. That is one line where POV seriously doesn't do the line justice. You need someone filming from across the valley to put it in perspective.

True that. The snow cascading off the cliffs almost made me pee my pants

Dave - nice vid on AP. Love the "Arrgh that was a rush", for what ever reason those little touches always make me smile.

Originally Posted by Schemeboat

There is a 170 ish mantra w/ jesters in CBC proper. Found by my buddy. It's out of the snow but still up there. Rusty. Anyways, i'm not going to go drag it out. It's likely left over from either a rescue or an injury. Right above the largest cliffs.

I saw patrollers skiing out of there holding a single ski, looked like a red/white/black mantra.

Originally Posted by Clownshoe

True that. The snow cascading off the cliffs almost made me pee my pants

Thanks! Photog was across the way in Spanky's

nice one dave, you made that look almost like a reasonable line!

Originally Posted by rugbydave

Thanks dude! By the time you woulda got there, there would already have been a herd of beaters making their way down both, was a freaking gongshow out there yesterday!

nice job! Looks like a 'don't miss' kinda line!

Hey Clownshoe, was there a big accident on Monday below those cliffs in the trees between Chunkys and Ratfink? Saw a group of 5+ patrollers there about 10 when Harmony cracked.

Originally Posted by Mark-R

I saw patrollers skiing out of there holding a single ski, looked like a red/white/black mantra.

Solid. SkiGeologist dug it out. He's on the board sometimes.

Went on a mission and found Blazers ski! Alex pretty stoked to carry trois ski up the stairmaster!



Still super stoked at the top of Phalanx



Mark lapping up the pow on poop chutes



some nice scenics from yesterday. Summit Chute on Fissile looks good to go.



The Whistler backcountry in all its glory!

^ this is fucking glorious

Perfect day around Musical Bumps today!

Here's one of me skiing Northern part of Oboe down to Singing Pass!

Originally Posted by powder11

Awesome skiing shot!

Originally Posted by powder11

man your def of filled in is different to mine, for a line of that seriousness i wouldnt want to see those little rocks lurking at the bottom
saddle looks nice though.

Originally Posted by PhilM

Nice one on Asian Pussy. That is one line where POV seriously doesn't do the line justice. You need someone filming from across the valley to put it in perspective.

yeah I thought it was nice skiing, then I googled it to see the the line and whoa!!!!

last week a couple buddies and I finally decided to head to the koots for a long weekend this one coming, booked it all, now it's supposed to puke here and not there....fuuuuuuugggggggin first world problems!

Nice shots P11. Love the smiles at the top of the stairmaster!

Originally Posted by nortonwhis

man your def of filled in is different to mine, for a line of that seriousness i wouldnt want to see those little rocks lurking at the bottom
saddle looks nice though.

Thats about as good as it gets. It's steep enough that you lose a good amount of vert on each turn in the initial chute, so you pretty much hop over those rocks in one move and then are out into the apron where there's lots of real estate. I certainly would'nt let em run through there, but it's not as bad as it looks. I skied it with an ugly runnel, so I guess anything is better than that!

It looked good from the top...



but was far from good after that!

Originally Posted by sparkletarte.

yeah I thought it was nice skiing, then I googled it to see the the line and whoa!!!!

Imagine you got some interesting hits googling AP...

I really shouldn't torture myself by ever clicking on this thread. Don't think I'll make it up there this season.

Originally Posted by lrjcrj

Imagine you got some interesting hits googling AP...

which is why whistler was the first word of that search.

Originally Posted by Clownshoe

Fantastic day on Blackcomb today! Bad Attitude, DOA, Corona, and Poop Chutes!
Blower and Blueblird!

On a completely different note, here's some dude slaying all the classics on Whistler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=-lodPfITnIE

Sweet video! Yesterday - blue bird, no crowds and still lots of powder on the sides.

Good snowpack info in one of today's MCRs:

[MCR] Coast Snow and Avalanche Observation Flight
Subject: [MCR] Coast Snow and Avalanche Observation Flight
Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2012 05:43:54 +0000
Hi All,

I went of a 2 hour flight today to check out a couple of operations for which we are forecasting avalanche hazard. The flight took us from Squamish southeast over to the Fraser River just north of Hope up to the south end of the Stein then back across just south of Whislter over to the Squamish Elaho confluence and south to Squamish.

The weather was generally good with a high overcast. A layer of marine cloud was crawling north from the lower mainland at about 5500-6500 feet but was broken and ended at the north end of the big fjordal lakes (Pitt, Stave, Harrison etc.). East of the Lillooet drainage there was a 30-50km NW wind that was transporting a lot of snow and made for a queazy flight. At 5000' it was -10deg and at 8000' it was 0 deg.


Below are some observations cut from the report I wrote about the flight for the clients:

GOAL:



The aim of this flight was to assess the snowpack that has developed over the last month. A secondary but equally important part of the flight was to see how much snow fell in the last weather event and see if any of the weaker layers that have been observed throughout the industry are becoming reactive.



FINDINGS:



There was a significant inversion. It was -10ºC at 1500 m but 0ºC at 2500 m
There was less snow from the recent storm in the Garibaldi zone. There was more storm snow west of the Sea to Sky and the area between the Lillooet River and Fraser River.
The freezing levels during the storm hovered at or just above 500m
A large avalanche cycle was observed. The cycle occurred for the most part toward the end of the last snow event, which ended on Monday (Mar 05) morning. The majority of the slides occurred around treeline, sometimes at quite low angles.
The deposits of the slides reached around the middle of the runouts and appeared as though they were very cold a dry when they slid.
There was significantly more wind effect in the alpine. In the alpine there were only avalanches in a few isolated areas that appeared protected from the wind.
West of the Pitt River there were less observed avalanches and these seemed to propagate shorter distances. Crowns averaged 40-80cm.
East of the Pitt River the avalanches were much larger in size even though the crowns were not as deep. Entire ridge lines up to 2000-3000m long slid during the cycle producing up to size 4.5 avalanches. Some of these ran several kilometers and over 2000 m vertical. Most of these slides were only 30-50cm deep (March 4 SH?), but in many places stepped down (Feb 16 SH/FC?) another 40-80cm.
In all areas 10-20cm of low density snow was sluffing on solar aspects.
It appeared that there was another avalanche event about a week or two ago, but crowns and deposits were quite covered so it is hard to estimate the timeframe of this event.


SUMMARY

The snowpack finally reached a tipping point. Two buried instabilities, the Feb 16 and Mar 03 became reactive with this last storm. Cold temperatures since have slowed the stabilization process and preserved these layers. If the warm temps tomorrow aren't enough to trigger a number slides then the added load of storms forecast this coming week will likely bring a large avalanche cycle both in areas that have not slid yet as well as reloaded bed surfaces.



It is unclear if the mentioned surface hoar layers were blown away before further loading in the alpine, but the snow appears to be slightly more stable above the treeline. If the weak layers persist and wind slabs bridged the instabilities during this last snow load then large full path avalanches could be expected with this coming storm system.





Conny Amelunxen
MG

Hey guys, back again with another question. I'm sure a couple of you have seen/know my buddy Alex Cairns up on the mountain previously, he's a sit skier and he absolutely shreds! Anyways, he's wanting to do DOA this weekend, either Saturday or Friday, and I was wondering what the conditions up there are like right now and whether or not there will be much snow between now and then?

Originally Posted by huntedyeti

Hey guys, back again with another question. I'm sure a couple of you have seen/know my buddy Alex Cairns up on the mountain previously, he's a sit skier and he absolutely shreds! Anyways, he's wanting to do DOA this weekend, either Saturday or Friday, and I was wondering what the conditions up there are like right now and whether or not there will be much snow between now and then?

Supposed to be a bit of snow through the weekend but as it stands it's a bump field...

Originally Posted by rugbydave

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lXYWe65mpnk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I give up, I suck at computers...

http://youtu.be/lXYWe65mpnk

that was awesome. You picked that thing apart