Northern BC 2013/2014 Stoke, Conditions

[Angle Parking]

I walked around up the praire and over above the O zone and that all appears to be smoke coming from the mill in Houston and funneling down pine creek instead of the bulkley valley

The Californians I stay with rave about their sunsets and I can't quite bring myself to point out it has much to do with their putrid air although I am pretty sure they know that already.

Ashman is the place to go if you are jonesing for pow around these parts btw. Local Crown Attorney skied most variations off the tippy top.

[LHutz Esq]

We were up at Ashman today - approach and departure were sporting - but worth the trouble. Almost makes you want to get a sled to ski out there more often in high tide as opposed to the current low tide situation.

[swissiphic]

The Californians I stay with rave about their sunsets and I can't quite bring myself to point out it has much to do with their putrid air although I am pretty sure they know that already.

Ashman is the place to go if you are jonesing for pow around these parts btw. Local Crown Attorney skied most variations off the tippy top.

In my three decades livin' in Rupert, the quality of the sunsets (on the rare days the sun did shine) got incrementally better year by year due to the increase in pollution pumped over across the pond from Asia. The year Pinotubo erupted was particularly notable as well.

As for Ashman, nice stuff!

[Angle Parking]

We were up at Ashman today - approach and departure were sporting - but worth the trouble. Almost makes you want to get a sled to ski out there more often in high tide as opposed to the current low tide situation.

I heard they are done logging out there so road
will no longer be plowed all the way to Cable turnoff.


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[LHutz Esq]

That sucks - I was hoping they would be going out the cable all year. I do have daisy

She is reliable enough - just with a 25 yo anything - you want another one along for backup if your doing a 40 km round trip. With the road plowed to the cable it’s only a 4Km round trip to the cabin - well within my risk tolerances on a 1994 high performance sled such as daisy

[Angle Parking]

Word on the street is that the road will only be plowed to 18 km fro the rest of the winter. My source is the aforementioned crown attorney and I don't know where he is getting his intel from but that dude is pretty plugged in to anything to do with skiing so I am inclined to believe him.

[LHutz Esq]

18 km on the Macdonald or the cable? 18 on the cable was about where they plowed to last week. Still drivable to the cabin - but that might (hopefully) change with the forecasted snow. There are a number of homesteads around MacDonald lake - I had thought they plowed to at least there every year - but who knows.

Hopefully our learned friend is right in so far as they are plowing to the cable all year- although I hear he is probably concerning himself with more important endeavors at the moment. Here is hoping all is well on that front.


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[Angle Parking]

18 km on the Macdonald or the cable? 18 on the cable was about where they plowed to last week. Still drivable to the cabin - but that might (hopefully) change with the forecasted snow. There are a number of homesteads around MacDonald lake - I had thought they plowed to at least there every year - but who knows.

Hopefully our learned friend is right in so far as they are plowing to the cable all year- although I hear he is probably concerning himself with more important endeavors at the moment. Here is hoping all is well on that front.


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He meant 18 km on McDonnell. What km is the last homestead on that road?



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[LHutz Esq]

37-39km


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[swissiphic]

50cms of comeback snowfall yesterday and another something like 20 overnight made Shames great again. Zero to hero.

60cms snow depth at the base, prolly 120ish top of tee.

The fattest of the fatties in the quiver r gonna get a workout today.

Game on!

[garyfromterrace]

Yeah, just in the nick of time. Gonna get me some this weekend
Too bad I miss ya mate.

[swissiphic]

Had a few 'holyfuckingshitthisisunreal' turns today at Shames.

Twas pretty deep on some pitches. No base to snowpack so fat skis, steeper boot/binding forward lean/ramp angle, soft forward flexing boots and momentum are your friends right now.

Blow the balance point and you end up high centered on the ground, hit logs or get stuck in blueberry bushes.

Made a few turns for you Gary...and yeah, too bad about missin' ya for timing! Come to Bell 2!

[garyfromterrace]

^^
Jesus, you made me salivate. Seriously. Nice.

[LeeLau]

That's awesome

[Angle Parking]

37-39km


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The Cable FSR turnoff is at 37.5. There’s no homesteads that far up is there? Regardless, with the new snow, i think i will be staying a little closer to home this weekend.


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[swissiphic]

Measured 45cms of light, dry fresh in the higher elevation portion of my downhill ski track from yesterday. Yesterday was pretty good...today was mind bendingly good. Cooler overnight temps combined with the weight of the fresh settled the midpack to provide a nice progressive right side upness to things. Didn't feel any of the aerated risk that were felt during some of yesterday's turns. Frequent faceshot, over the head pow turns on the lee side of the Knowls ridge. Frontside was a hair less deep but skied oh so smoothly and had a bit more reboundiness to the turn feel. What a storm cycle! If it continues auspiciously, it has the potential be as good as the miracle week in jan of 2011 where I think it was 300cms of snow fell at cool/cold temps.

[swissiphic]

Snapped off a quick lap this morning down AOT at the hill to complete a trifecta of days of mind bendingly good skiing. No skiing for the next 7 days so feeling some gratitude for workin' the window.

Another 25cms of fresh overnight in yesterday's tracks....unreal...it's a gift that keeps on giving storm with full resets overnight. Snowpack on the hill is right side up and pole plants go down to the handle if you push.

Forecast calling for rising freezing levels and rain on the hill...fingers crossed that either it doesn't manifest or it's just a temporary aberation in this very auspicious weather pattern.

[garyfromterrace]

Shames delivered the goods last weekend. As did Terrace birthday party, where a wedding broke out. 200 people surprised. Polly (well known to Smitherines) and Rob got hitched. Here's the wedding cake:







A couple of Vivian shots from Sunday in Burnt Trees.

Looked at a photo of the hill last Monday and figured one would be hiking to the top of the chair before skins came on, oh what a difference a 1.5m storm will do to things. Christian decided last Thursday to spin the lifts on the weekend with ULLR blessing the place so heavily. It's game on in Terrace these days.

[swissiphic]

Report of a near miss in the Shames backcountry yesterday. Big powder cloud. No details on exactitudes of sequence of events but it was a skier remote. As for avy data; suspicians that it ran on nov. basal facets. Crown 130 to 300cms deep by about 60m wide. Size 3.

[gwat]

#holyshit!

[Angle Parking]

Looking up the fan to the entrance of the Wolverine Den.

[swissiphic]

Did a coupla days of ski touring from valley bottom out at Surprise Creek east of Bear Pass. Day one featured rain runneled refrozen breakable crust over 30cms of damp mank. Ski turns required a chess game strategy of 'okay, if i can hammer off these next three turns, will my quads be too cooked for that emergency stop on the top of that next smooth looking slight rollover down 100 meters?'. Couldn't play checkers and just plan turn to turn...there were multiple tip spear stabs through the crust into the hard to read little bumps in the snow and a few that resulted in full stop, upset the apple cart, slow unstoppable falls head first down the fall line and stuck with ski shovels sandwiched under the crust and stuck in the mank. Those really sucked.

Day two was all of the above enhanced in horror due to puking snow at a rate of 3cms/hour, totally flat light to destroy the ability to discern any terrain bumps and bruises, a fog zone of about 500 vert feet in which safe turns were an impossibility and having to draw contour lines across the slope to dump vert was the only option, a short steep, ice glazed frozen bombed out forest section with dust on it to make it impossible to skin and made for bruised knees from the mandatory bootpack, variably punching through to the thigh and bashing knee on the ice ledges...and/or crawling, spittin', foaming and swearing profusely and at high volume of audibility to an audience of one lone wolf in the vicinity.

It has snowed about 30cms since then, so I expect the conditions have recovered somewhat until the next thaw/rain/freeze cycle....

[Alkares]

Debating heading up to Jasper as I saw it may snow a bit in the next couple days. Any update on the conditions? Thanks!

[garyfromterrace]

wrong thread. post in the rockies thread, jasper is in western alberta.

[Angle Parking]

Shout out to the Trail to Town. HBM was closed due to wind yesterday. It seems everyone and their dog was doing some sort of shuttle from the ski hill to town. Skis, snowboards, fat bikes, GT's, camp fires by the side of the trail. The Rotary knocked the ball out of the park on that project. Good times