Ongoing TR: Neverending winter

**angrysasquatch** · 04-16-2013, 05:44 PM

I ski a lot, and take a lot of pictures, and like sharing them. I am neither a skilled photographer nor a wordsmith. Just a skier, and a hack at the other two. In an effort to not overstoke the CDN Rockies thread, I'm going to chronicle my travels here. Not every day will be epic, but some definitely will. Hopefully this will go on right till next winter. Hope you like it

April 16; Lseed and AS; Dogtooth Ridge N Primer; Selkirk Mountains, Dogtooth Range, Dogtooth ridge

April 17; Lseed and AS; Grand Daddy Couloir

April 22; AS solo; Dream line

May 1; AS solo; Cirque Cirque Peak

Winter; AS solo; Season Edit

May 14-15; Lseed and AS; Holt Creek Camping; Selkirk Mountains, Dogtooth Range

**angrysasquatch** · 04-16-2013, 06:13 PM

Dogtooth ridge holds some of the most coveted lines around Golden. They are plainly visible from town and the ski hill and always make you think I wonder if I can ski that?. Slab rock pushed up on 45+ degree angle, laying ontop of one another, then heated up in the mantle to melt and reform into gorgeous rock formations.

The day started at 3am. Up to the Kicking Horse parking lot, up the ninja trail, up the ravine to Dogtooth bowl

Daybreak

Skinning was better than I could've imagined

Up we go

The line we were gunning for didn't look so good from the top. It had looked like there might be a mandatory straightline or cliff into the main part of the chute, but I was using pics from October, so it was hard to know.

So we went down a bit...

And up...

To greener pastures

Dropped the wide chute just left of center. Pretty rad place, no?

Good thing we didn't try this thing

The dream line. On the list. Dead center banana chute, start from sunny peak

Not content, we ventured further afield, where we met a mountain goat

And skied more north facing pow

Then it was time to go back up the col at the end of Dogtooth ridge. Almost there

And ski more pow

By the numbers, ~15 km, 2200m of up and down, 12.5 hours

**KansasBoarder** · 04-16-2013, 06:57 PM

Boom. Looks like a sweet day up there. The rock formations look otherworldly - and to have skiable terrain in them, too good! Nice pics and thanks for sharing 'em!

**2stix** · 04-16-2013, 08:42 PM

Awesome AS. Keep it up man, love the off season stoke and glad to hear you plan on keeping it up. Looking forward to your adventures. Play safe!

**Mike Pow** · 04-17-2013, 02:26 AM

Love those mountains.

Thanks.

**angrysasquatch** · 04-17-2013, 06:55 PM

Today we went for a very asthetic (and pretty steep too!) line that Lseed has been wanting to hit for a while. Grand Daddy couloir is a striking line off Bow Peak, and very deep and very north facing so little sun gets in. Sounds good, eh?

Left the warmth of the Suby and headed towards the mountain. -14c when we left the car at 1850m, I was amazed since it was +2 when I left Golden (800m)

Then the light came out and I was soon down to base layer and still too hot. Grand Daddy is the line on the left you can hardly see

Properly deep couloir. We had both estimated the angle of the main couloir at 42*, but the inclinometer thought 48. Not sure how much I trust technology...

Well that escalated quickly. Fucking massive 30ish ft cornice with a cool snaggle tooth thing hanging down. Pulled the plug on trying to top out on the couloir

I opted to climb a touch higher to a short side chute out of reach of the massive cornice. Too steep to put turns in with that width... for me

Done like dinner. Looking up Grand Daddy, main chute goes a little bit left out of view, side chute is the dip in the horizon a bit to the right, also out of view

Some guys had been in it yesterday, and the snow wasn`t spectacular but it was an awesome ski regardless. Warm weather moving in, glad I got after it while the going was good. Might put up older missions if I get cabin fever, but broadcast will resume next week if not.

3km in, 3 out; 200m of shitty bushwhacking, 300m of fan, 300m of couloir; 6 hours

**grinch** · 04-17-2013, 07:08 PM

great start! some aesthetic lines in good light

Hugh Conway · 04-17-2013, 09:35 PM

sweet line

**adimmen** · 04-18-2013, 09:01 AM

Good stuff and cool to see the teeth up close. Those lines look amazing.

**angrysasquatch** · 04-22-2013, 01:30 PM

Had the best run of my life today. Remember the "Dream line".....?

Early start to the day is always best. Skins and boots on at 4:30am

Golden just before dawn:

It's so nice having your own skintrack, at your preferred angle still there, a week later

A familiar sight

I might just have a photog somewhere deep inside me, who knows?

Up and away

Was sure glad that I brought the second ice axe for this bit. Needed to use the business end for once

At the top. Straight down the toilet bowl. Couldn't go right from the top, there was some wind affected snow that was a bit frisky.

Well I guess that choke goes... Choke was actually incredible, a good 8ft wide and as steep as I've ever skied on. No ice, just really quite nice snow.

Yupppp

And back up toward the car

Some kind soul left this perfect pitch skintrack here!

Homeward bound

My backyard kicks ass

**angrysasquatch** · 05-01-2013, 03:55 PM

I saw a pretty epic yo-yo zone on Google Earth (GE), been wanting to check it out for a while. Many, many oversights but it was still fun.

Parked the car and was getting out when another car pulled up just down the road. Skiers, so I drove down to see where they were heading since company is always good. They were heading to the other side of the highway, and didn't have much time to get high up. So I got all my crap together, skins on snow at 6:15. Headed up thru the woods, always taking a left when given the option to hook up with a ravine which was my landmark.

Hey, this isn't the right bowl!

Decided to top out on the ridge, as I had driven over the ravine looking for touring partners, and so all my lefts got me to the next bowl. The one I wanted was just to the right.

There it is. Yo-yo route goes to the col dead center and back lookers right to all the chutey gnar

Saw this cool looking bowl near my bowl. I can think of many snowboarders who would love that natural half pipe thing... hell, I might too!

Hmm, there was a lot more skiable lines on GE... D'oh, looked at imagery from May 2012.. the most epic year in a long time. Still looks like 2 or 3 lines that are nice and have avoidable cornice. This is only the NE facing half, there's more to the right NW facing... Perfect on paper, right?!

Since I was alone, I wasn't in the hard charging cliff hucking mood, so I thought I'd bag the peak and do one line instead of yo-yoing it. This is the false summit of Cirque peak, on GE it looked like nice scree up to the false, then follow the ridge over more scree to the true summit

The true summit and the "scree ridge" I was hoping to go up and down... fuck that! Cool looking lines though, too bad they all drop onto a massive glacier... GE shows those just fine haha

Going back the way I came would involve downclimbing thin snow on rock, and I'll be damned if I'm going to work both ways. Went 20 feet up the ridge to this instead, the line from upper left to bottom right, and it was really good with no gnar factor once you saw it from the top.

The Yo-yo zone is the right side of that ridge... Not nearly as easy access as I thought. Decided to just ski from the col rather than trying to skin up the backside, which could easily be shitty hard windcrust or something

Snow was good!!

Powderrrr

And out the way I meant to come in. From the moraine all the way to the road it is stupid flat. Lotsa trees to deal with too.

Lots of good terrain up there. Doesn't matter with the upcoming weather, but skied SE, SW, NE and NW slopes, all were really good. NE was fucking money nut deep though. Stupid stable. -2 at the car (2000m) at 12pm. Topos are now part of my planning regimen... lesson learned

1100m, 10km, 5.5h

**_Aaron_** · 05-01-2013, 04:12 PM

Good stuff here. Looking forward to the rest of your season.

Originally Posted by angrysasquatch

Topos are now part of my planning regimen

This made me laugh. FYI there used to be a GE overlay with topos here but I have no idea id it still works or if it works for places outside the US.

**angrysasquatch** · 05-06-2013, 06:22 PM

Here's some proper winter:

**IVplay** · 05-06-2013, 08:07 PM

Sweet edit.

**SterlingSpikeDancer** · 05-06-2013, 10:03 PM

Killer stoke, thanks for sharing, and having the fun some of us WISH we could have all year!

**2stix** · 05-06-2013, 10:23 PM

Nice Squatch
Keep it up.

**mtnbiker/boarder** · 05-07-2013, 01:42 PM

fkna.. thanks... sweet stoke

**angrysasquatch** · 05-16-2013, 03:21 PM

With the snowline slowly creeping up and out of sight, it seemed to be a good time for longer trips deeper into the Dogtooth range to some of its higher peaks. We planned a 3-day camping trip up Holt Creek to bag some of the remote (my definition has changed from this trip) 26, 27 and 2800m peaks within a day trip of Holt Lakes.

The trip started on the 14th, bright and early. Big farkin packs on bikes is interesting to say the least

Before long it was time to skin

Past objectives, Dogtooth ridge N

New objectives: The X-couloir. A name I made for it, but pretty applicable. 650m of vert in couloir. 750 if you count the fan too. This is the skiers left on the lower section.

Finally a good look of camp, ontop of the treed pillows, under the big cirque above. Starting the day at 2200m instead of 800 seems like a good idea, no?

Our first look at our line on Holt Peak. On the list for tomorrow

Unpack camp under Holt Peak and head off to bang off X-couloir today.

Ontop of the X-couloir. Looking down skiers left upper to skiers right lower.

The main one on the right is skiers right upper. Summit is on the left.

Looking around from the peak, new objectives just keep on popping up. Just another unnamed peak in the Dogtooth Range.

I did a little scramble to get the true summit. Scenery totally sucks, no?

Pretty epic couloir

Pics can't do it justice.. well, at least not without a wide angle lens.

Lseed drops one of the entrances on skiers right.. as it turned out, there's a lot more than 2 ways in and out

And I opt for something a little more... spicy?

Now the snow got great, with a long ways to go still.

And back to camp to rest up

Day 2

We started heading up at 7am. Nice view of Holt lakes and valley out to Columbia valley. Camp is somewhere near the smaller lake on the right, but even I can't find it in this pic.

One of the few chinks in the armour of the cliffy backbone that runs all the way from Kicking Horse resort to well past Dawn Mountain. We're going to use it to get to the next range to the West.

Our first glimpse of the 2800m Dogtooth Peak and Moonraker Mountain.

Got to the Dogtooth-unnamed mtn to the S col and decided that the scramble to the peak was going to be a bit much to do in ski boots.

So we enjoyed the view of mt Macdonald and the Sir Donald range, mt Sir Donald being up in the clouds

Then enjoyed the corny turns on the endless moraines down to Canyon Creek

Lseed waits for the heli pick-up that never comes

Then we get ontop of Holt peak. I had the fun job of probing the double cornice to a place we saw from below that avoids the cornice. The minimum strike distance became more than my 360cm probe could do, lots of snow. The tent is a jumble of about 30 pixels from up here.

Lseed high on the face

Lower down. Hooting and hollering and "FACESHOT" was heard

Fuck yeah. Pow in May.

After skiing Dogtooth peak I decided that between the pretty nasty sunburn I had sustained on the previous (greybird!?) day, and my soaking wet (with sweat) boots and subsequently very worn feet that we should think of going home a day early. The objectives for the next day looked pretty good during the planning stages, but after seeing them in person, didn't look like really memorable objectives that would be worth the extra wear and tear. So we ate the last of our meals, packed up camp and set off with the heavy packs.

The rest of it was a brutal bushwhack thru iso snow on barely downhill ground, while the drenched skins stopped functioning after the glue gave up and the skin tacoed. Back at the car at 11:30, a retarded 16.5 hour day. Glad to be able to sleep in a bed and stay out of the sun the following day though.

**grinch** · 05-16-2013, 04:40 PM

siiiiick! great looking lines.

**LSeed** · 05-17-2013, 10:58 AM

Yea boi, Gettin Rad.

**2stix** · 05-17-2013, 09:48 PM

Nice angry, way to get after it.
Is all of that area open to random camping? Are fires allowed?

**angrysasquatch** · 05-17-2013, 10:43 PM

Yup, just no motorized stuff allowed. Not sure about fires, I think it would have more to do with forest fire likelihood which is pretty well nil with snow on the ground, no?

**Rip'nStick** · 05-18-2013, 12:02 AM

Who are these guys?

Abzolutely awwsome. We needed some new heroes around here, Way to bring it!

**2stix** · 05-18-2013, 12:31 AM

Originally Posted by angrysasquatch

Yup, just no motorized stuff allowed. Not sure about fires, I think it would have more to do with forest fire likelihood which is pretty well nil with snow on the ground, no?

Being doing a bit of research using a portable wood stove for in a tent (long story) found out about the parks (banff, yoho and glacier) but don't know who to ask for areas like yours. Would be awesome if it was a go in your zone, would love to explore that area and your research is much enjoyed!

**angrysasquatch** · 05-21-2013, 05:19 PM

Thought it would be a good time to get after a more well-known line, before Moraine Lake road opens to public and the famous lines get schralped.

Famous (not my pic)

The day started yesterday actually, with plans to bike up the (now plowed!) Moraine Lake road and ski the line bright and early. As I was eating my mini wheats Lseed called me up and and cancelled because he woke up with a flu. So I slept in till noon. Upon waking from slumber I got in touch with another mag, who sent me a text at 2am saying he wasn't up for it today. Well fuck it, solo it is.

On the bike at 4am, looking up at the 700m couloir at 5:30ish. Relatively little freeze on the fan, but I was pretty sure the couloir wouldn't turn to iso shit before ski time came around. 3/4 is notorious for its rockfall. While I did see a bunch of quarter inch pebbles whiz by (helmet AND goggs on for the up) it wasn't much of an issue. Likely because of the light freeze I suspect. (beta: rock time seems to be between 7 and 8am, the sun gets off the lookers right wall after that. Not that lookers left is totally stable). The steep part (at least half the vert in the couloir, all between 45 and 50* I reckon) was cock stiff, no breaking thru to anything softer which is good.

Then it was time to go down. I waited at the top for about a half hour for the upper to soften up, then I got tired of getting blown around and just went for it. The top rolls off under you, super cool. Usually the first couple turns are tentative while you get adjusted to the steepness and then its business as usual, but with the rollover you're sussing things out for 20 turns before you're confident in skiing it. Snow was hard up top, good thing Ontario skiing prepared me for that. Fan was water skiing, just keep on plane and everything will be alright.

Then skin back to the bike, and bike so fast that I was looking for another gear and not finding it.

28km of biking, 3km skinning (round trip on both), 900m of skiing