Tarleton Skiing

I arrived home on the train on Friday (17th) evening just as it was beginning to snow in Preston. Between then, and when I woke up on Saturday morning it didn't really stop, with places getting 6-12inchs.

Skinning on Hesketh Lane.

After getting in late (2am) from the Ormskirk Network Christmas Meal in Southport I decided that considering the conditions it would be foolish to pass up the chance for a quick ski-tour round Tarleton. I managed to ski down Sutton Lane, through Mark's Square - much to the amazement of those that were still in the Lilford. Then all the way up Hesketh Lane to the High School where I skied down to the canal before heading back up to the main road, down Kearsley Avenue and home. Never thought I'd get to do that in Tarleton!

Saturday, Jacob, Andy and myself took the car out to the moss for some more fun with both the skis and sledge. I found skiing the powder on the verges of the road to actually be really good fun - although perhaps a little more akin to waterskiing than actual skiing!



Later that night we took this to another level though when Martin, Bob and Tom joined us complete with Landrover so we could really get some speed up on the Moss. We all found it quite exciting skiing and sledging behind the landrover at speed with somebody hanging out the back with a lantern illuminating where you were going. Anyhow, lets hope this snow sicks around. I'm hoping going to try and get to the Lakes tomarrow for some climbing, so if I do I'll report conditions when I get back.

Arc'teryx Gamma SK Pant - Review

As the winter season draw to a close I thought I'd offer some thoughts on some of the kit I've been using this season, starting with the Arc'teryx Gamma SK Pant. Arc'teryx's blurb for the pants on their website is as follows:

"These super durable softshell ski pants are designed for high-output touring days, combining superior mobility and breathability with cold/dry weather protection. The Burly double weave textile is extremely tough, comfortable next to the skin, and stretches with movement. Perfect for skiing or alpine climbing, these lightweight pants feature articulated patterning and built-in stretch powder cuffs."

I'd had my heart set on a new pair of ski pants for this season, something that would handle both backcountry and touring stuff as well as days at the resorts. Below is a basic summary of features and qualities I was looking for:

• Breathable - skinning up hill is hard work, especially in the spring sun!
• Water-resistant - it generally doesn't actually rain in most of the environments I use these so they don't need to be waterproof as such but a degree of water resistance to shrug of snow is needed.
• Wind-proofing - to keep the wind chill at bay.
• Hard-wearing - I don't want these pants to wear out after one season, so the material in general needs to be fairly tough, and some protective material of sorts on the cuffs.
• Braces - I like braces, especially on ski pants.
• Big cuffs - either with or without a zipper but big enough to get over ski boots.
• Look cool - for being down with the kids on the corduroy!
  

So taking these into account I began to trawl the web for possibilities, and narrowed it down to the Patagonia Backcountry Guide Pant and the aforementioned Arc'teryx ones, both which ticked most of the boxes. I tried both pairs on in Monodsports in Banff and in the end settled on the Gamma's.

I bought the Gamma's in a medium, I probably could of got away with a small, and if I was buying them for alpine climbing I certainly would of gone for a smaller size but for skiing I wanted to be able to get a good few layers under them in the depths of Canadian winter as well as avoiding that stereotypical 'tight pants' European skier look! They come with a pair of braces that are quite low profile but still do the job, I like this as sometimes when you've got a pair or two of braces on, and a transceiver and a camera on a strap you've got so many straps on your upper body it feels like you should be in some sort of S&M movie! The cuffs are wide enough to fit snugly over ski boots and keep the snow out, but are easy enough to pull up to adjust buckles when switching from walk to ski or cranking up for a particular challenging line.

The pants are not insulted, theres no fleece or synthetic lining to add warmth but I liked that. I find when touring all I need to wear under them is a pair of thin thermals, on warmer days I go for a pair of Mountain Hardwear Alpha Dry Tights and on cooler days, a pair of Arc'teryx Rho LTW merino wool pants. For piste skiing I wear the same but add a pair of powerstrech pants in between the layers, which has so far kept me comfortable down to about 20 below. The climate is while being very cold at time, pretty dry here, I've never felt damp in the pants despite their lack of waterproof membrane. The closest I think I've come is when sitting on chair lifts when snow has begun to melt a little on my thigh which are pretty warm from just burning down a run - this is easily brushed off though as it beads instantly thanks to the DWR treating of the pants, which is still going strong after over 25 days of heavy use.

Wearing the Gamma SK's while touring on the Colombia Icefields.

Like I said above, I've used the pants for over 25 days now, for all of my backcountry and resort skiing and they still look as good as new. Theres one small knick from an errant ski edge on the cuffs, on the softshell fabric rather than the hard wearing patches. One other feature I particular liked and i've found useful in the backcountry is two cargo pockets on either side which are handy for a map or other things you want quick access to.

At $200 there not reasonable but not exactly expensive for a Arc'teryx item. A lot of people criticize Arc'teryx gear for being over priced, and a year a go I would of agreed however I bought a few items of their gear while over here and I have to say its some of the best I've used. Sure its expensive, but is does the job and it lasts. Simply put you get what you pay for.

So in conclusion, if your looking for a pair of pants for all you ski exploits, then take a look at these, they haven't let me down yet.

Just a quick addition here, I've just seen that the pants have also been reviewed over on the Alpine Guides Blog, check it out to see their views as well.

Black Prince

I headed out to Black Prince, a popular backcountry ski area down in Kananaskis with Trevor yesterday. We had fantastic weather with great if perhaps a touch warm.

Black Prince is located off Highway 40, about 50 minutes from Calgary, and a maybe 35-40 from Canmore. The slopes that are usually skied sit below the mountains from which they take their name, a winter ascent on skis isn't listed in the ski guide and I don't know if its in the Alpine routes guide, but it would make a good objective especially for the summer. You skin straight out of the car park crossing the basin towards the slopes, following the river. Once you reach the slopes their are few options, we followed the hiking trail which had a nice skin track from a party before us up and then broke out onto the ridge through the gradually thinning trees until we reached the tree-line. This is about 5km and 4-500m of ascent In good snow stability conditions you could continue further up the ridge to get a longer descent but due to the warm temperatures and high category we choose to stick to the relative safety of the trees.

Snug trees on the descent of Black Prince.

The descent is lovely at the top with fairly open glades where you can get some nice wide turns with the slope probably sitting about 25-30 degrees. The snow was a lot better than we expected (I was pretty worried driving through the upper Kananaskis valley as it has lost most of its snow), I sank to my thighs a few times when I stepped of my skis - not glorious fresh champagne powder but good enough for us. The guidebook dosen't give much information as to the distribution of the trees across the drainage and I think we got sucked into following some other people's ski tracks and ended up skiing some pretty tight trees towards the bottom. Eventually the slope will spit you out at the river, depending on where this happens you might be able to get a clean run onto the trail and back down to the car park, unfortunately we were a bit to far to skier's right for this so had a done skins for a quick ascent over the ridge before the final down.

Again I was using Chic Scott's 'Alpine Ski Tours: Summits & Icefields in the Canadian Rockies' which I found to be a good aid.

Back to Trevor's in the evening for some beer, steaks on the BBQ and the chance to get a fresh coat of wax on my skis for free!

Powderwhore

The rockies have been pretty dry for the last few weeks, the resorts were really starting to show the lack of snow, still plenty in the backcountry as I found out on the meadows last weekend though. Thankfully a few systems have come through this week and put some down, Sunshine got 20cm Tuesday/Wednesday and I hear Norquay got nearly twice as much, 35cm, on Thursday. So plan is to get out and look for some fresh tracks, heading out tomorrow with Trevor to a yet-undecided destination, avalanche forecast is a little high but I'm sure we'll find some nice slopes to ski, and then having a resort day Sunday with Trev, Ian an Dena - should be a good weekend.

As such, while having tea tonight I did a little surfing on Google video for some skiing clips, its nice to gawk at people that are far better than you'll ever be from time to time! I particularly enjoyed the one below:



I'll report back on the conditions and where I ended up when I get back.

Quick side note, I went to my friend Dena's band at a gig last night, I've seen them before and again they didn't disappoint. They're a Ska band and do a very good cover of Reel Big Fish's 'Beer' Check out their MySpace - I know still in the dark ages.

Sunshine Meadows

Having had quite a heavy week, with lots of midterms and a few papers due I was looking forward to the weekend and getting back out into the mountains. Unfortunately all my usual partners found some excuse or another to be busy which was a shame, but un-deterred I planned a solo ski mission out the back of the Sunshine Village Ski Resort in Banff National park which turned out to be a fantastic day, excellent weather and views and a little solitude.

Very clear skies - Mt. Assiniboine the Matterhorn of N.America.

I caught the Sunshine Coach early on Saturday morning, which while still not being cheap is cheaper than any of the other means of piblic transport out there at $35 return, and gets you to the resort for 9:30am. I decided to make use of the lift pass and ride the gondola up and got in a few runs around the resort to warm up and check my knee wasn't having issues. I then caught the Wawa chair to the top, donned skins and headed up to Wawa ridge. I ran a few laps of the top of here first getting some nice fresh tracks before dropping off to the SW and heading towards Twin Cairns the 2,550m highpoint of the meadows. The skin up was fantastic, if perhaps a little warm but the sun was certainly welcome - very much like spring skiing. I decided to forgo the actual summit of Twin Cairns a few hundred meters below the top due to the slope looking a little dodgy and having had the sun all day (the avalanche report was pretty ambiguous, categorizing the day as 'Variable' but did specifically warn about solar triggered slides, which I could see going of several slopes in the vicinity) and the fact I was on my own. I got some more fresh tracks in, interspersed with a little skinning on my way back down to the resort. I had a little time left before the coach left so did some runs on Goats Eye which had some surprisingly nice snow at the top, then the ski out back to car park. Back in Calgary for 7:30pm.

Looking out across the meadows from the top of Wawa ridge.

The meadows are a great venue for some very accessible backcountry skiing. I first read about them in Chic Scott's Ski Trails in the Canadian Rockies. They consist of a undulating plateau that sits at around 2,300m, a few hundred meters higher than the ski resort to the east with a few peaks accessible such as Twin Cairns which I mentioned above. Theres no specific route listed in the guidebook, just a description of the area which I quite like, its a change from all of the other prescribed routes - this is probably due to the low objective danger of the area, there no real alpine hazards and while still there the avalanche danger on most slopes is generally usually low. As such apart from actually informing you about this areas existence the guidebook isn't actually that helpful! A much better aid is Gem Trek Publishing's Banff & Mount Assiniboine 1:100,000 topographical map, which has an enlargement of the meadows at 1:50,000 on the back, the contour intervals are at 50m though which takes a bit of getting used to for those of us that have grown up with ordnance survey's 10m ones!

Theres certainly a few more trips worth of skiing to be done out there so I'll be heading back out at some point.

Wapta Icefields Traverse

I had last week off as reading break from university, which was welcome as the first part of this semester had begun to tire a little after a great month off at Christmas with friends and family. Before I arrived in Calgary, last summer I did some preliminary reading on the classic mountaineering objectives in the area and compiled a short informal list of stuff that I'd like to do out here, the first thing that sat quite highly in the ranking was the Cascade ice route above Banff which I managed to knock off in January with some friends from the UK, so with a week off I figured that it was time to cross another one of these of the lists, and what better than a traverse of the Wapta Ice-fields.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the route its a hut to hut ski mountaineering route, often touted as Canada equivalent and competitor to the European Chamonix - Zermatt Haute route. The Wapta Icefields sit in the central ranges of the Rocky mountains on the western side of the Ice-fields Parkway. The route is linear moving southwards so requires you to do a car shuttle on either the first or last day. We took 4 days over the traverse, but missed out the Peyto hut due to hearing that the approach had a significant section of boot packing on it, and nobody really likes carrying their skis. Instead we began with an approach to the Bow hut, then a day ascending Mt Olive and getting to the Balfour hut, a day traversing the Balfour high col to the Scott Duncan hut and then on the final day we took the Sherbrook Lake ski out exit down to the West Lake Louise lodge.

The skiing on the route is for the most part fairly easy, with the hardest section being skiing the glades and canyon on the ski out. The glaciers are also fairly tame with no significant objective dangers apart from the ascent to the Balfour High Col, this section certainly warrants the party roping up and moving fairly fast as some big serac bands hang above the route, this danger can be lessened to a degree by taking the lower glacier route but while be objectively a little safer this is more crevassed and demands more attention to navigation. We were lucky and had fine weather for 3 days of the trip so navigation on this section or any of the other was never a problem, I could imagine in worse conditions though it could get very tricky. In case of this, and in addition to a map and compass, I carried a GPS with relevant waypoints programmed in, many other up there also seemed to be taking this precaution.

I used the 'Alpine Ski Tours in the Canadian Rockies' guidebook to plan the trip, along with articles I read on the internet. The map which seemed best to support these was Murray Toft's 'Ski Touring on the Wapta Ice-fields' which has the routes and huts marked as well as some helpful photographs detailing the best lines to take. I found this map elusive in Calgary, even MEC didn't stock it but I fortunately managed to pick up a copy in Banff at Mountain Magic for $23 - not super cheap but its printed on nice waterproof and tear resistant paper so if you look after it you should only have to buy one.

I did the tour with two friends of mine from Calgary; Meg a telemark skier, and Dena, a climber and alpine skier who is fast developing a passion for the backcountry. Everything went to plan and we achieved guidebook time on all of the day. Theres a video below that follows our trip, and a set of photos in my Picasa gallery that is linked above in the tabs. If I have some time I may write more narrative entry about the trip later in the week, but we'll see.