Trowbarrow

With the advent of what seemed to be a early summer last week, Wednesday afternoon myself, Rebecca, Jonny and Jade headed up to Trowbarrow for what was for me, the first proper day in rock boots of the year.

Climbing on Frontage.

We geared up below Assagai wall and to warm up I did a quick solo of Frontage HS 4b, rock climbing head back on. Rebecca has just started leading so she lead Frontage up to the halfway ledge and then up the second, and more interesting part of Jomo VD *** to the top of the crag. While we did this Jonny and Jade climbed the true line of Jomo in it's entirety. Next up we did Coral Sea VS 4c** which Rebecca also led, which is very impressive for a 3rd lead!

Rebecca leading Jomo VD**.

For the last route of the day it was my turn on the sharp end so we did Assagai HVS 5a** which was excellent as ever. We all topped out just as the sun was setting, before packing gear and heading off. Imran's in Lancaster naturally followed.

Sunset from the top of Assagai.

For those that haven't been Trowbarrow is a excellent venue just south of the Lake District Natinal park on the Silverdale Arnside peninsula. Its easily accessible by public transport being a 10 minute walk from the Silverdale rail station, and is a good option for when the weather is bad in the lakes or just for an evening cragging.

Photos courtesy of Rebecca.

Sunshine Skiing - End of the Season

Headed out to Sunshine on Sunday, courtesy of Tristan and met up with Joe, Lou an their friend Chris who is visiting. For those of you that were in the city you'll know that it put down a few cm's on saturday afternoon and evening which made us quite optimistic for the snow conditions. While not being a true, baseless, deep powder day there was a good few inches with a fairly solid base beneath it which made for some lovely skiing in the morning. Later on we headed out of bound looking for some fresh turns which paid off we we got some lovely powder skiing on a slope up and above the Continental Chair bottom station.

Taken from the top of the 'Bye Bye Bowl', Mt Assiniboine is the shapely peak on the right.

After a hearty lunch of Yam fries and wings in Trappers we headed over to Goat's Eye for the afternoon with the intention to ski some of the chutes, unfortunately these were closed, but we manged to traverse from Cleavage almost up to them for some nice steep skiing and then some snug trees. We skied middle/lower canyon out that is certainly showing its age as there are three streams that have opened up which require little jumps to get across them!

So, probably the last day on planks for me this season, its certainly been a good one - better then my average of a week in Switzerland/France and the odd day in Scotland!

Photo courtesy of Joe.

Sunshine Spring Skiing

Friday was Bermuda shorts day at the university, simply an excuse the thousands of UofC students to drink a lot, not go to class all in the name of bringing the spring semester, and year to an end. I had a great day, I'm not going to go into exactly what I did but I hit all the big events; beer mile, couch races, pancake breakfast and the cage. The day itself made national news, which considering Canada is a big country I'm pretty impressed with, you can see CBC's report here - its worth a watch.

Saturday was spent recovering from Friday, a theme I imagine was common for most of the university's 24,000 undergrads. In the evening I headed over to Ian's for some beer, and pizza before we headed out skiing to Sunshine on the Sunday. Conditions are still fair at sunshine, snow cover is better than expecting although with the bring weather it is thinning in places, this is especially obvious on the higher scree slopes of Goat's Eye which being out of bounds are not maintained, most runs have a full covering though. The big issue at the moment in the temperature, by the afternoon the runs are getting pretty moist and slushy, and by the time its time to ski out you're dodging puddler - but I guess thats the sacrifice you make for being able to ski in a jumper with you sleeves rolled up!

Sunshine is open until May 23rd this year, although quite how many more days I'll get on planks, in resort or in the backcountry I don't know. If this was my last day I'll be happy, but if I get 1-2 more I'll hot 30 days this season which I'll be very happy with!

The next ten days are finals for me, so whether or not I get a post in I don't know.

Sunshine Skiing

I had 3 days earlier this week staying in Banff, out skiing with Joe, Lou and Frank on his visit from the UK. Thankfully we managed to coincide we one of the biggest dumps since the Christmas break which was nice and since it was a weekday it was fairly quiet. We found a really nice powder stash out of the back on Standish lift by ducking the rope which we had a few great laps on.


On the last day we found even better skiing over on Goat's Eye mountain, if you traverse out right from the chairlifts theres a series of double black diamond chutes which drop through cliff bands, we skied the first of these which was in pretty good condition but a little thin in areas that had been windswept. The ski itself was ace, its fairly steep at the top (maybe 45 degrees?) so if you took a decent fall theres a good chance you woulden't stop, the couloir narrows at the bottome but once your out you end up in a wonderful open powder bowl with lovely skiing and then some nice glades which eventually spit you out on a piste. Fantastic.

We stayed in the Brewster Mountain Lodge in Banff which we managed to get a good deal at, $90 a night for a room of two. I can also now highly recommend The Saltlik restaurant; not cheap but up there as one of the best steaks I've eaten.

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.