Snow Chasers

From Roger's Pass back to Vancouver

2012-01-23T18:21:00.000-08:00

As according to the plan, we stayed around Roger's Pass since the powder was soooooooooo nice and light!

We again teamed up with Piet to go towards Hermitt area to ski some fairly steep and nice powder.

This is quite a classic run and one of my Roger's Pass favourite so I was pretty stoked to head back this way.

As we expected, the run was steep and deep.

After a final night staying in our car up at the Pass, we now went for one of Amelie's favourite: Teddy Bear.

The 20-30cm that have fallen in the past days haven't been skied and we really had fun.

We only had one lap since we were going to a family dinner with my cousin that are living in Kelowna.

After having a lot of fun we had to tackle the road to drive back to Vancouver from where she was flying at 8h30 the following morning. We really had some crappy weather and what is usually a 3-4 hours turned into a 6 hours drive.

We finally arrived in Vancouver at 3h30AM. We stopped at a gas station from where Amelie packed her gear. At 4h30AM we totally collapsed in the car for a 2 hours nap.

I finally dropped her at the airport at 6h30 and after a short nap, I headed to the local mountain of Cypress with my friend JS that lives in Vancouver since some new snow has just fallen overnight.

This mountain is located about 20minutes from town and while having a small size resort atmosphere certainly has a really nice and gnarly backcountry that certainly please the locals when the snowpack is nice.

Unfortunately for us, the warm temperature from the past days has created a really hard crust keeping us inbound.

Etienne and Nic, two of my friends are arriving tomorrow night to join me and JS for a little roadtrip. There is a huge system coming around Mt Baker in Washington state and it looks that it might be our next stop.

Cheers,

evans

Roger's Pass still delivering it!

2012-01-18T23:14:00.000-08:00

As planned, we stayed around Roger's Pass. The nice snow, cold temperature and the hospitality of our new German friends, Piet and Joerg made it a no brainer to stay around.

Living at the top of the pass is something I truly appreciate. The surrounding mountain, the snow, wandering around in the morning trying to figure what would be the best plan for the day while measuring the different options, being kicked out of the Roger's Pass Discovery Center at 17h00 to go out to the parking lot to cook or just moving out to the bar at the Glacier Lodge Hotel are all part of the daily routine.

Piet came with a nice idea that would involve hiking to the bottom of the Connaught Creek drainage to a pass and skiing down to the road. The weather was really nice and we figure this hike would be a nice idea.

With the sun slowly but surely dropping, we start skiing down the west face of Cheops down to the Transcanadian highway. I was really glad that the German had this idea since it was a really nice run.

It offers a steady long steep run and in bonus you got some free vertical as you just have to hitch your way back.

Piets and Joerg came with another great idea for the following day so we decided to tag along! We hiked up to ski a run called Frequent Flyer. This avalanche slidepath offer a really nice and steady pitch on which I have looked but never give it a go.

The run was pretty much as plan and after Joerg assess the snow stability, we gave it a go!

Those non-stop days of skiing as led us to another classic of British Columbia: the Aquatic Center!!!!

Japan may have onsen, but a lot of the towns of BC have an aquatic centre with hot tub, steam room and sauna for about 5$. There is no better (and/or cheaper) way to spend a day off the slopes and refresh the legs than this place.

With new snow on the forecast, we figured it would be a better idea to drive up to the pass to spend the day up there than to try to drive our rental car with threadless 4 seasons tire rental up the pass in a snow storm.

On the morning, we had the great surprise to woke up with some really nice and light snow falling gently into the crisp morning air.

Piet as he was looking for ski partners since Joerg was nursing an old injury. We agreed to go give a try to McGill Shoulder since the visibility wasn't so nice.

After a rather long hike on which Amelie complains about the length, we finally got to the top.

We traverse and got to a glade that was looking very good: wide opening with only few trees that was totally untracked. Seems like the hike was quickly forgotten by Amelie who was quite excited about skiing some of the nicest snow she hasn't skied in a long time!

We were all quite surprise about the amount and the quality of the snow! 40cm of 3.6% density of new snow had finally fallen windless where we were skiing. I guess you can't really hope for better snow.

We only have 2 more days left on this leg of the trip before having to drive back to Vancouver from where Amelie will fly back to Quebec. With prime skiing conditions, we'll most likely going to stay around Roger's.

Cheers,

evans

New and old love!

2012-01-13T17:55:00.000-08:00

A warm front was forecasted just as we were arriving in Vancouver, so first thing we did was to check at the airport which direction to take for the best snow. We finally made up our minds for the Duffey road area located about 45minutes north of Pemberton.

After getting our rental car at the airport we headed to my friend JS' apartment for a little rest.

JS was to join us with two of his local friends from Vancouver, FX and Hugo. We left Vancouver at 5h45 in the morning to start the 3 hours drive.

The skiing domain around the area is really extensive and it looked a bit as the Roger's Pass of the West Coast. The plan was to hike up Rohr ridge and find some lines.

The hike was quite straight forward and not too long for a first day out.

Excited as we were, we skied late in the day on some really nice and creamy snow. I was really stoked to have my first turns of the year out in the backcountry.

Since the warm temperatures weren't too present, we decided to stay around and camp at the top of the pass to ski another day.

The area definitively got some nice terrain. There is also a bunch of cabin were one can stay (Keith's Hut, Wendy Thompson Hut)and use it as a base camp.

Our second day brought us a bit more warm temperature. As we got to the car, the snow was almost falling as rain.

Amelie and I splitted from JS who needed to go back to work. We drove towards Lillooet to check out the weather forecast and buy some food. The forecast was now calling for colder temperature around the Duffey area and 15-25cm of snow.

We made a plan to go back up there since the weather was quite promising.

As we got to our trailhead, we realized that the weather forecast might has been a bit too optimistic for the freezing level to drop down since the temperature was about 1deg. We slapped our skins on nevertheless and start climbing towards Joffre shoulder.

As we were climbing, water drops were coming down from the trees and the snow was really wet. The ski didn't look so good but we kept going anyway. After an hour or so, trees stop raining on us and the snow started to look a bit better.

We finally made it up to the top of the run with a bit more motivation than previously expected. That motivation quickly disappear as we struggled finding good lines on the way down. We hit heavily treed area, cliff band and hard-to-ski pillow lines. The early season snowpack didn't cover much of the obstacles and I had some early season skill to ski it!!

When the terrain eased up, we finally hit the really wet and massively tree-bombed forrest.

We were both disappointed by the run we just made and the absence of the new snow that was forecasted and the persisting warm temperature cut our love story with the Duffey area. I am really looking forward to come back in more decent temperature to further explore this area.

I haven't hit Roger's Pass for 2 years now and I figured it would be a great way to celebrate my 30th anniversary so we drove East towards arguably the best backcountry spot in Canada.

We were rewarded with some rarely seen weather at the Pass: -5deg, blue sky, no wind…. and about 40cm of light powder!

Damn I have miss this place!!! The mountains, the terrain…. and the light fluffy powder! As a starter, we played it safe and headed to Teddy Bear Trees. We silently carved turns in the bottomless powder until we were too tired to climb.

I had expected a classic Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce for my birthday dinner cooked in the parking lot of Roger's Pass, but that was before meeting Piet and Joerg, two Germans who were living in a RV up at the pass and invited us for dinner!

I certainly had one of my best meal ever up at the pass!! I certainly couldn't have ask for a better way to spend my birthday!

The forecast looks promising for the next couple of days so we will most likely stay around for few more days!

Cheers,

evans

Kick-off of the 2012 snowchasing season!

2012-01-08T22:00:00.000-08:00

Seems like 'real' life start catching a bit on me! Various obligations has delayed this year start the latest since I started snowchasing 7 winters ago. A real busy fall both at work and at school have combined for my most out-of-shape early season ever... To help things up, the warm temperatures brought in the Northeast by La Nina has brought some really bad early season skiing conditions in Quebec cutting a bit my motivation to train... Goodies from the sponsors did get me a bit more pumped up at my upcoming season but it still didn't put me in decent shape....

Nevertheless, I finally catch a plane with Amelie today that would get us to Vancouver. I will stay around BC and Washington for about 3 weeks depending on the precipitation. I am quite stoked to be back after not skiing in North America for 2 years. Revisiting some of my favourite area and trying to explore new spots are on the plan.

Following this journey, I will catch a plane to Kyrgyzstan where I will be joined by my dad for a three weeks trip. This ex-soviet republic is surrounded by China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and more than 60% of his landscape got mountain over 3000m! This should be quite an experience and I am really looking forward at this stretch of my winter!

On the way back from Central Asia, we'll stop for about 2 weeks in Europe for another little roadtrip depending where the snow will be. The only thing sure for now is where we are landing and departing.

View SC2012- Destinations in a larger map

If everything goes well, this will get me to the last stretch of my winter to Alaska where I will be first joined again by Amelie for the first two weeks for a roadtrip around Anchorage. The 2 last weeks are still a bit uncertain, but a final plan is getting prepared with Babiche somewhere between Anchorage and Cordova.

Kicking off another world tour!

Stay tuned,

evans

6th season wrap-up

2011-04-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

Under a not so great sky, we spend our last day visiting the beautiful city of Budapest.

We packed everything and from the camper and went back to drop our ride.

There, we had the not so great surprise to be welcome with an invoice of over 500 euros for the repair of our previous rental.... Considering there was only a light to change (hard snowbank!), it was really overprice! We argue for hours, but since they had a deposit there wasn't much we were able to deal! We finally cut it off since our plane was leaving in only and hour or so!

What seem a great deal at the beginning turns out to be a real rip-off and I don't think you want to deal with http://www.lakoauto.com/. If you do, make sure you don't give them a too big deposit.... Anyway, we are in the process of trying to settle this out, but there isn't much hope from this side of the ocean! Damn, Hugarians!

The flight went flawlessly and after 82 days on this epic journey, 14 different planes, about 80 hours spend sitting in different planes, visiting/passing through 15 countries, skiing in 9 countries, driving over 6000km, I was finally back home (and a bit drunk from the open bar on the flight!).

Even if I have only been able to nail down about 63 days on the snow (this is an all-time low!!!), the experience was better than what I was expected. Having been able to have a real travel experience while being able to ski most of the time was quite a thrill that I think more people should try! To be able to get a taste (or at least a glimpse) of the local culture is really cool and I think made me love skiing even more! I am even more lucky to have been able to share this epic journey with people that I really care about and that are important to me.

It's been over a week that I am back home and I have been fairly buzy shovelling my car out of the snowbank, watching TV and drinking beer with my non ski-travelling-friends.

It seems like I will be able to have a job allowing me to take the 2012 season off again! I'm really stoke about that and I think I will start planning right now! I can't be sure, but I will certainly try to have some kind of international plan again!

Hope you have liked the 2011 edition and I am really looking forward to entertain you again next winter!

Have a end of the season for the lucky of you that are having a longer season that us in Quebec! I am starting my whitewater season tomorrow!

Cheers,

evans

Not much skiing, but some great discovery!

2011-03-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

Just after posting, we drove towards Malyovitsa, Bulgaria. According to the information of GoogleMaps, we drove towards Rila valley.

This ride up this small valley took us about 3 hours until we realized that we weren't in the right valley. Actually, to make it up to this small resort with some apparently good backcountry access, you have to make it almost to Borovets.

We finally arrived to make it up to the resort at about 15h00….

The resort is small and by talking to some fellow coming back from the backcountry, it takes about 3 hours to make it up to the top of the run.

We were so frustrated to have miss a nice ski day, that we left just some after some snack towards Brezovica, Kosovo.

I have heard the mountain range around the resort was steep and gnarly. So we made the drive out of Bulgaria, into Macedonia and finally in Kosovo.

We entered the small Republic without problem and slept in the small town just next to the ski operation.

As we showed up, the lift were pretty much all closed but the small T-Bar. There are a lot of lift that haven't run in a long time! With a nice sun shinning up and the warm temperatures, we started skinning unto the upper slopes.

The lift serve terrain is just a fraction of what it was when the resort was in full operation.

It is some great news for someone willing to hike up! We made it up to an open bowl face with steep terrain and slightly melted down from the sun.

The turns were great but our best findings was the adjacent mountain you can access.

Just in a slight distance, the mountain are steep and offers some of the best skiing terrain I have seen in the Balkans! With the time ticking, we maded it our plan for the following day. The turns we made were great and we lapped it a few times under the warm sun. We make it back to the RV with great plans for the next day!

We woked up to the always bothering sounds of rain falling onto our rooftop… In desolation, we had a long breakfast talking of our options.

As we were doing so, the rain stopped and the weather cleared out!!! With our late start, we agreed that we were too late to make it up to the terrain we scouted the day before and head towards the bowl next to the one we skied.

We founded again some nice warmed up snow on which we only had time to make one lap…

With the time flying by, we figured Kopaonik in Serbia can be a nice destination. We finally made it up to the border around 22h00. We left the border of Kosovo without problem… but never made it into Serbia! Since Kosovo isn't recognize as a country by Serbia, the border patrol didn't recognize the stamp we got as we made it into Kosovo.

Our options were either to drive all the way south into Macedonia (14+hours) or southwest to Montenegro(10+ hours). From either those two country, we would be able to enter Serbia. After telling us not to make the drive at night because the road was robbery-proned and too dangerous at night, we went sleeping in a truck stop he pointed us as a safe spot to sleep.

We chose to drive to Montenegro. If you ever try to go into Montenegro from Kosovo, don't chose the road GoogleMap will give you as it will leads you onto a small winding road more suited for a 4x4 than a RV.

We agreed to make it back to Pec for some pizza and beer to change our minds.

After driving up into Montenegro by the main road that was going toward Rozaje, we eventually reach Kopaonik 24hours later…

We again woked up to the sounds of the falling rain… for our last ski day, we were left with with the clouds just 50m in the sky, 1Celsius and the wind blowing at 50km/h!

We made the decision to make our way back to Belgrade to spend our day and to get closer to Budapest from which we would fly from.

The city is not the greatest city I have visit and after spending the afternoon wandering around its street, we made the decision to drive towards Budapest in which we will spend our last day visiting.

I am writing this last ski-report from the rest area just next of the Hungarian-Serbian border. I'll write you the wrap up of the last winter, once I'll be back!

Cheers,
evans

Good late season cold and dry powder from the Balkan!

2011-03-16T10:29:00.000-07:00

We woked up on a beautiful and warm day in a greek resort named Vasilitsa. As we were getting ready for skiing, we realized we didn't have any euros to buy the tickets. The ski resort, being small and local, didn't take our credit card.

After some talking and negotiations with the nice and friendly ticket seller, she let me have the two passes for free because Greeks are just really nice people!!! We were excited about saving the 8 euros the day ticket cost.

We took the chairlift and made it to the top. After one run down the upper chairlift, this later one broke down and would be down for the whole day…. Another badluck with the chairlift (after Popova Sapka)! Nevertheless, we found some really good snow on the nearby sidecountry!

Surprinsingly, a 10m vertical hike that took us 5 minutes has discouraged the greek skiers to come get the goods near the lower chair! This would be our playground for the day as the groomed runs weren't much exciting.

After debating about some ski spots to hit on the drive up to Budapest, we finally agreed about going to Kozuf in Macedonia. We used the toll-highway and made it back to Macedonia pretty fast. We slept in Gevgelija, a small town just past the border.

From Gevgelija, we followed the signs to make it towards Kozuf. It is pretty well indicated and rather surprisingly easy to follow the good road on the hour or so it took us from Gevgelija to the last town before Kozuf called Smrdliva Voda. We then realize a new sign as been put on the indications: ROAD CLOSED.

We checked out with some rather alcohol smelly locals the different options to figured out there was no way we would be able to make it up to Kozuf for the day. It was too bad since apparently, this local mountain features some really nice terrain both inbounds and out of bounds. While trying to get up the road, we met Zlatko Paliluleski, a really motivated Macedonian skier. He was so stoked about meeting some Canadians who were in his country for skiing that he invited us for a coffee to talk about the different skiing options in the Balkans.

We went to a small coffee in Gevgelija that seemed more out from a hype neighbour of Montreal than from a little town of Macedonia. Around a good cold-sugary-creamy style coffee, we spend some hours talking about skiing and also the political struggle of Macedonia to get recognized as a country of the United Nation.

He convinced us to go to Bansko, Bulgaria… even if we had statued the day before that we wouldn't go there because it was too far.

This resort is probably the biggest in the Balkans and features all the modern facilities you would expect from your favourite resort. It has been the host of a Men's Ski World Cup at the end of February and the slope they are using for this event is one of the most impressive I have seen in any resorts.

As you load in the gondola, there is not a flake of snow on the ground but this high speed lift takes you to the base of this impressive resort. Bansko Resort has mainly wide groomed runs that were pretty hard since it had been warm in the past days and it was just a bit too cold to melt the slopes on our visit. The top of the resort features backcountry access to a nice steep face.

Unfortunately, most of the best top lines have already been skied. We gave a try to the lower part since it was north facing, The snow was not deep but pretty dry and soft. There was even a ski out back to the chairlift.

After having few laps, we randomly bumped into the Swiss family that sent us down towards Vasilitsa. After some talking for some times, Germain (the Dad) decided to come check out the slope with his 7 year old kid, Alex.

He hiked the 100m vertical without taking any break and without complaining. After some help of his dad to clean his boot, he clicked his skis on and traverse to the open bowl without hesitating. He skied down without too much problem and even made the ski out throughout the tight trees faster than us! He was certainly one of the most hardcore 7 years old I have skied with!

On the hike up towards the little north face at the top, there is a nice long open face. We figured it would be a great way to finish our day. After crossing onto the slope, I realized that a shaded side of a couloir had nice soft snow but it was steep!

This is certainly the steepest slope I have been on with Amelie! We both made it down without much problem ! I was quite proud of Amelie to be able to ski down without complaining (for once!!!). Her legs were shaking as we got to the bottom from all the steep turns!

We have previously agreed with the Swiss couple to meet them later on and after a good soak into a hot-tub, we joined them from a few drinks. A really nice finish to a nice meeting deep down in the Balkans. We have planned to go to Malyovitsa today. This small resort is just next to Borovets and is supposedly featuring some really good backcountry.

Cheers,

evans

Roadtripping the Balkans and skiing Greece

2011-03-10T15:30:00.000-08:00

Amélie arrived as expected. But in the meanwhile, I haven't really been able to find a car at a decent price with room enough for two to sleep in the back and with a rack on which we would have been able to strap our ski bags.

The RV rental company as contacted me about a camper that they had to rent me, but the price they quoted me was too high to split by only two persons. We thought, we could maybe see if they had anything available. After some negotiation, we settled a really good deal at 40euros/day including everything…. with no invoice of course!

So we moved all our stuff from the big RV into our new home! This smaller version was perfect for only the two of us!

All set up, we left south the same day towards Serbia! We haven't made it 1km from the rental office that we ran out of gas..... The rental fuel us with 1liter! Just enough to make it to the next gas station. I guess someone as really understand when they said that we don't have to bring it back full!

As we entered the ex-Yugoslavian countries, the scenery was familiar as travelling across the Canadian prairies…

The final destination of this roadtrip was Popova Sapka, Macedonia. What? You never heard of Macedonia? Guess it is a bit normal. This small balkan country is nestled between Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Serbia and Greece. I've heard great things about this resort and with new snow on the forecast it seemed like a good time to check it out!

After travelling across the plains and driving through Belgrade, we eventually quitted the flatland of Serbia to enter a much more mountainous landscape.

We drove through some pretty heavy snow in times promising for some great skiing!

We finally slept in Tetovo just 13km short of our final destination.

A short drive uphill led us to this old resort nestled at 1100m. Unfortunately for us, the storm that was forecasted have moved south and was (apparently) hitting Turkey in full strength (don't ask me what those huge storm we drove through have gone!). We both agreed that Turkey was too far to think about it (at least for this time!).

We were left with some hardpack snow from the latest warm front with not much freshies on top. Even better, the main chair was broken! We figured we could always spend the day exploring the backcountry and see if the north facing aspect were having some better snow.

We found a nice cat-track that was going around the mountain and it seemed a great path to check out different aspects. As we skinned our way around we cross a snowcat full of skiers. Popova Sapka is (I think) the only place in Europe where you can do some cat-ski.

Even if Amelie was really motivated at skiing, she had to agree that there wasn't much good snow this time around. It is too bad since the terrain is nice and the past weeks have been quite snowy.

As we skied out, we met a couple of Swiss with there 2 kids of 7 years old skinning uphill! Those were the youngest fellow I have ever met in the backcountry! They told us about a resort in Greece, Vasilitsa, where they skied the day before and that has good snow! A so motivated couple couldn't be wrong!

We follow their advices and left for the 5+ hour drive south. We made it just short of the border that day and slept in Bitola, Macedonia.

After packing up some supplies at the market and filling up on gas, we cross the border and kept going south.

We eventually made it up to Vasilitsa resort at 14h30 just in time to see that they were closing the lifts. I was rather pissed about not skiing that day, so we skin up the nearby sidecountry. 10-15cm of nice light snow was covering much of the slopes.

We made it to the top of this 530m (1620m-2150m) nice little resort to get a really nice view of the surroundings. With the sun slowly sinking, we started skiing down is some great conditions!

I was pleased by what we were skiing since I wasn't expecting much about the Greek snow!

We eventually made it down to the camper just before dusk. Since this brief introduction was really interesting, we are going to stay around here for one more day to check out what this is really all about!

Cheers,
evans

View Balkan1 in a larger map

More Austrian skiing before the baths of Budapest!

2011-03-06T02:55:00.000-08:00

We figured Obergurgl would be great for another day of skiing.

We have spotted a nice gully in between the resorts Hochgurgl and Obergurgl. The motivation level was low as we were making our way up the resort to gets to the good.

Even by using some new motivating strategy, we didn't made it pretty far that day! A huge cliffy dip cut our ascension towards the north faces we were trying to reach.

We turned down without getting any good turns. As we were driving down the valley, we pick-up 7 Germans who were going down the valley! This was certainly a jam-packed RV that made it out the Otztal valley!

After dropping our new friends, we made it to Kitzsteinhorn which is the resort in Austria boasting the biggest vertical drop. The view from the town wasn't any promising as there wasn't much snow on the ground!

After catching 6 different lifts, we finally made it up to the highest point of the mountain at 3000m! This resort feature some really nice terrain that can certainly make a great destination on a good snowstorm.

The top part is a bit flat and good for someone looking for open-groomed runs but the lower part got some nice rocky outcrop everywhere creating gullies and ridges quite fun to ski.

There wasn't much snow reported lately, but we were surprise to find some good snow all over the mountain (and some nicely hidden rocks!).

After an other day topped up with warm-wine, we left to go to the nearby Gastein valley. The more we made it eastward, the tinnier the snowpack.

We drove up to Sportgastein who seemed to have the best terrain. This resort is nestled high up and using only one gondola and one T-bar to serves its terrain. There was certainly not a lot of new snow around but by being creative, we were able to link few good turns here and there.

This morning session was the last one for this first part of my European journey. As we had 8-10 hours to make it back to Budapest, we left early to get close the Hungarian capital.

We saw the valley getting wider and greener while the mountain were now snowless until we were finally down to the plains. We stopped short on the way around Gyor (about 1.5hours from Budapest). We had lunch over some more skiporn before heading out.

As it was the birthday of Jeff on the following day, we took off to celebrate his 29th anniversary. We ended up in a karaoke bar, where Hungarian music was making it's effect on the local crowd to warm them up. We tried to joined the karaoke, but I certainly have to tell you we weren't even closed to nail the lyrics down!

A short drive lead us back to Budapest. After going around town to settle the car rental for my next 2 weeks, we made it up to Szechenyi Fürdö. This old public bath features countless pools at various temperatures, saunas and steam rooms. A great way to relax and enjoy life after a good 2 weeks of non-stop skiing.

As the boys were leaving early this morning, they packed all the stuff before going out for a gigantic food-fest at the Fatal restaurant. The service was as crap as the porting were huge!

After eating too much, we drove out of the downtown to get close to the airport where I drove the boys this morning at around 4h30.

I am now waiting for Amelie who will be landing in about 1.5 hours. The plan is still a bit unsure, but the Balkan seem to be pointing out as our stomping ground for the next 2 weeks. Here's the map of the past two weeks journey.

EuropeEstpart1

Viszlàt!

evans

Willkommen to Austria!

2011-03-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

With the storm rolling in Austria, we left Cortina direction Innsbruck. On the way, we had spotted a ski resort called Stubaier Gletscher as a good potential destination. We were quite optimistic as this resort had received 20cm in the past few days and another 15-20 was in the forecast. We left Italy, it's coffee and it's beautiful girls for this new promising destination.

This turned out to be a good decision as we woke up with more than 10cm of fresh on the ground. After the bad surprise that this resort doesn't sell single rides to the top, we were left with no other choice than to slap on our skins and hike up the nearby slopes.

The snow was really nice and fairly deep!

Even with really bad visibility, we lapped it and had the best turns of our European journey so far!

From the mountain, we heard really loud party-style music! What a surprise to find out there was a huge party in the bar just next to our camper! The legend of Austrian's ''après-ski'' was proven true: even in subzero temperatures outside, people were dancing and partying in ski boots (lasers and smoke machines included)!

Traditional Austrian music helping, we joined them for few drinks as a cultural experience!

The snow was so good, we figured it would be worth exploring the area another day. Unfortunately, the temperatures warmed up and even with 10 more cm overnight, the conditions were not as good as the previous day.

Etienne was leaving us to join a friend in Berlin, so we cut the day short and encouraged him as he was packing his gear. We then made it to Innsbruck where we parked just next to the train station; his early departure spot the next morning.

With Etienne now gone, we drove all the way to Hochgurgl-Obergurgl where we spotted a parking lot just next to the resort at 2171m. With the warm temperatures experienced in Stubaier at an altitude of 1750m, it seemed like the best option even with the high altitude mishaps of Passo Pordoi!

We hiked in a great bluebird day and cold temperature helping, the snow conditions remained good even in the slightly south facing aspect.

The snow was light and much drier that what we had skied the day before.

We are going to stay around Hochgurgl-Obergurgl for one more day before planning our drive back towards Budapest where the guys are leaving in a few days!

Auf wiedersehen!

evans

The dark side of RV travel

2011-02-28T09:30:00.001-08:00

Since the last post, most of the days had happen with their little (or quite big) misadventure with the RV. After the nice skiing we were able to get close to Pordoi pass between Arraba and Canazei, we figured we should camp out at the top of the pass to be close to the face we were planning to ski the following day.

What we didn't know at that time is that the diesel, if not bought as Antigelo (anti-freeze) gas freezes in the tank! So we woked up the following morning and tried to get the camper started.

After pushing to get the camper to the sun, using a booster pack and trying to start it by using the compression we cut our efforts and left to ski.

Our options were limited starting from where we were parked and we skied the nearby north facing aspect. The snow was allright but the 150-200m long laps weren't much exciting.

After lapping for about 3 hours all the good terrain we were next to, we came back to the van to see if anything happen during the day as we left our camper with the hood wide open to warm it up under the sun! It wasn't working at all and with the cold weather in the forecast, we had to call a towing to get towed down to Arraba.

The towing guy was like most of the towing guys I have met in my life: frustrated about having to towed you! The guy at the garage wasn't much helpful and after understanding that we weren't going to be able to sleep in the camper for that night, we gather the necessary and took off to find a place to sleep. Here we were at 20h00, homeless and searching for a place to stay in this small village!

We were finally able to get a room for 2 where we packed 5 guys!

Since we were stuck in town, we left to check out the nightlife of Arraba on a wednesday night. Some Weissbier and shooter helping we were all able to get a good night of sleep!

The camper was all fixed the following morning and 320 euros later, we were all set to go… We drove down towards Corvara and since there wasn't much stuff interesting in sight, we kept driving around. We finally ended up in Passo Sella where we took off to get some turns. A closed gondola has left a nice face track only by a few turns.

The climb was rather slow considering the physical health of the troups, but we finally made it up the Forcella Cinque Dita couloir that had some nice sheltered snow in some places but also had few wind-harden snow in other places.

We drove down the pass to get a night of sleep next to Canazei.

By looking at the maps and books we had, we figured that the Marmolada massif will provides us some nice turns. We were quite wrong on this one since most of the lines and faces we thought about hitting were already tracked. We kept driving and finally made it to San Pellegrino pass. After getting stuck one more time with the camper, we were able to try our home-modified chains to take us out of the snowbanks.

We scouted a nice open face and took off to check it out.

The snow was really wind-scoured and it is the least to say it was really challenging to ski it down! We all made it down this hard-soft snow challenge but we kinda left our motivation on the way down.

The wind has really affected the snow and after having to avoid the south and west faces, we now had to find some east and north protected from but wind but still high enough to have some nice snow.

This is getting really complicated for a first visit!

The boys took off to get some turns inbounds at Cortina d'Ampezzo as I tried to set up a good plans for the coming days. A storm is supposed to hit quite hard the Western Alps and leaving some snow north from where we were.

We are now driving north towards Austria where some snow has fallen lately and more is forecasted overnight. Hopefully, this will ends up our unlucky strike of 2 days without good snow!

Austria here we come!

evans

From Budapest to the Dolomites!!

2011-02-25T01:57:00.000-08:00

The crew I was to meet consisted in my friends JS Ratté from Vancouver, JF Marchand now living in Grenoble, JP Paiement from Montreal and Étienne Bernier right from Suriname. I met the three first one in Budapest at the airport and Étienne was arriving the following day.

After catching up with the boys at the airport, we made it up to Laukoauto from where we were to get our RV for the next weeks.

The RV is really cool and we certainly have a lot of room to put all the gear. We were all super excited about our ride for the next 2 weeks.

It is my first time travelling in such a luxurious ride, but it wasn't much expensive than renting 2 cars for the 5 of us. Since Étienne was landing a day after everyone, we had a night to spend in the Hungarian capital. After packing it and stopping to get some supply, we parked almost downtown Budapest and took off to celebrate our gathering.

We had some big plans for that night but after just few beers, we totally collapsed from the jetlag and made it back to the camper for our first night.

Étienne finally arrived as expected and we were able to finally take off towards a skiing destination.

After searching for the best option, and cross-checking all the information about the yearly snowfall and the latest accumulation, we settle our minds that the best destination possible was the Dolomites in the northeast of Italy.

After driving for 8 hours, we were not even close to our destination. We figured it would be a great plan to check out Kransjka Gora which is one of the best resorts in Slovenia. Kransjka got some really nice vertical but this season has been really bad for snow for this resort.

This small but steep resort is home of an FIS slalom event in the coming week, but we won't stick around to check it out. Anyway, it was cool to get some turns in Europe even if most of them was from an artificial source.

Another 6 hours drive later and we were…… stuck at Col Gallina. The chain we got with the RV weren't the good size for the tires we had. The tiny bit of snow on that rather steep pass forced us to camp.

Fortunately for us, they salted the road and we were able to make it to Arraba in the heart of the Dolomites where 140cm of snow has been reported in the last 7 days. After debating the best options around, we took off for a nearby tour to see the options available around!

The mountain range around here are really stunning and the skiing options are simply endless. The Dolomiti Superski features 450 ski lifts that interconnect valleys and towns limiting the skiing options to your imagination. Our imagination for that first tour was a bit limited, but the snow was really nice around Passo Campolongo.

We figured our best option was a nearby north face from Pordoi Pass. After some hard time just to get the camper out of the parking lot, we were finally able to make it up the pass at around noon….

The skin up went fairly smoothly and the turns we were able to get were certainly the best we had so far in the trip!

We were able to get three runs in before the face we were on was totally tracked (at least to my standard!)

A nearby face is our plan for tomorrow and with the clear sky and the cold temperature, we are certainly looking at another great day of skiing tomorrow!

Arrivederci!
evans

Last report from Gulmarg.... at least for this year!

2011-02-18T10:17:00.000-08:00

The storm rolled in and last exactly as expected. Was was not expected is the freezing level to drop down and the amount of snow coming with it!

So we had to relay on Mary's Shoulder again to get some turns in. The storm has been on for now 4 days and breaking the trail was quite a work out. The snow had a fair amount of water in it and wasn't super light.

As we got to the top of the run, we realized all the northern aspect (the run we intended to ski) has already avalanched. Our only option was now the south face. The south face of Mary's Shoulder is a bit less steep than the north face. There was about 40cm of snow up there and the turns we carved were really deep.

The face we were skiing wasn't steep enough to get enough speed to get the skiing we liked. So after only one lap, we went down the Gondola Phase 1 and head straight down to the hotel for some cleaning to get ready for the next part of my trip!

As a daily routine next morning, I went out before breakfast to check out how much snow has fallen overnight. To my great surprise, the snow was really light and nice! Every 45cm of it was just what we hopped for!

So we hit Monkey Hill again! We had swore not to ski it again since it is a bit short and boring….. but still what we figured what was our best option. Not being able to ski some good terrain during a massive storm is certainly something annoying about Gulmarg. It is even worst since you cannot get some good snow this season all the way down to Tangmarg which is usually the backup option.

The snow was really deep and probably the lightest we had ski in Gulmarg since we got here.

We made laps through the sparse trees in some really deep snow. We kinda have to ski a little bit backseat since we were sinking in that about 1.2m of fresh snow. The run on the south side of Monkey is definitively much better than the north side offering more pitch and longer runs. It is a nice run to ski down on the south side, skin back on the road and start from the skintrack just next to the police station.

Blue sky, no wind and an early start from the gondola lined up everything we could hope for our last day of skiing. After a little chat over breakfast with the patrollers, they were certainly quite optimistic about being able to open up the mountain.

We had a lazy morning since neither Babareshi, nor Monkey Hill, nor Mary's Shoulder were appealing to us.

We wanted to ski Phase 2!!!

We got to mid-station around 11h00AM and put ourselves in the line. There was only a group of three skiers in front of us.

We waited while soaking in a warm midday sun to the sounds of avalanche control nice bombing sounds.

The lineup in Gulmarg is like nothing I have ever seen in any resorts. First you get in line as we did in the morning. Then, you gotta send someone go get the (always) so precious single ride ticket. They only start selling the tickets when the ski patrol give their clearance to open the mountain. It is a real shit-show to watch (or in my case, being part of) how everyone is pushing and hustling to get the tickets. The Kashmiris are particuliary goods are sneering any kind of lift line since they are locals.

Once you get your tickets, you rush back up the hill to get back to your skis that are in line. Then, at the confluence of the waiting lines, the staircase that you have to climb when coming back from buying the tickets and the tiny little opening to get in the gondola is where the most aggressive pushing, yelling and insult festival I have seen in a ski line up is taking place.

People are trying to sneak in, local Kashmiri guides are trying to get inside from another door to get their foreigner clients inside and fellow skiers who have been waiting in lines for hours who are getting quite pissed by what is happening all at the same spot.

Apparently it is getting better nowadays. Just 2 peoples that day have been involved in a fist fight…

Anyway, since we were in the front, we managed to get on gondola #4 (after a Kashmiri guide and is clients…..)

The snow has again been blown off and from the about 2m of snow that probably has fallen over the last few days, only 20-40cm were left on the ground. We didn't really stop much for talking and discussing our findings on our first run.

We rushed down fast to get as many run as possible.

We have only been able to get 3 runs in…. but they were certainly some of our best turns of our whole 3 weeks in Gulmarg.

Like in Japan, it was frustrating to have to leave in what was some of the best conditions of the season. I have really liked the experience of skiing in Kashmir. It is an ski trip that goes way beyond the deep turns in fluffy powder we are all looking for.

The taxi driver who came to picked us up to go to the airport hasn't been able to make it to our hotel since his tires were too shitty…. So we had to walk about 400m with our gear in the snow to get to his car. Fortunately for us, the military forced him to put chains to go down the slopes.

The security check in Srinagar are the thighest I have experienced. We had our luggage scan at three different places. It is thigh, but everything went pretty fast. I think it is a good idea to get to the airport at least 3 hours in advance.

When we got to Delhi, the airport pick-up we were supposed to have wasn't there. So we walked to the prepaid taxi stand and realize the hotel where we were staying were charging us 3 times what the regular fare is….

It is really simple to get a taxi from the prepaid stand and I would highly recommend to anyone going to India to just get their taxi straight from there.

One more day spend wandering in the so crowded and chaotic streets of Old (smelly) Delhi and we were off to go back to the airport to fly off from India.

As I am seated now in Amsterdam waiting for my friends to show up for the last part of my trip that will lead me to ski for my first time in Europe, I am quite excited about catching up with 4 really good friends, renting a RV in Budapest and taking off for this roadtrip!

Our first plans about hitting Slovakia and Poland will certainly change since it has been a quite bad year for snow in this part of the world. The fact that a storm is rolling it the southern Alps of Italy may totally wreck what we first thought about doing. Whatever happen, I'm quite sure it will feature a quite epic ski/travel/smelly experience in that RV we are about to get!!!

Stay tune for more coming from Europe!

Finally up... but someone made it down fast!

2011-02-12T10:17:00.000-08:00

The second stage finally opened and we were able to finally get the so precious ticket! The most common way to go in Gulmarg is to buy single ride tickets at 250 roupies (5$) for a single ride, it doesn't cost to much!

As one would have expected, some kind of Chinese downhill took place as the first people on the gondola have been able to made it up! We were able to get some good turns, but the meter or so that had fallen in the past days have been quite carried around and packed up by the wind. Consequently, we were skiing in only about 4-5inches of fresh.

We were able to see some of the avalanche the patrols have triggered earlier during their control. It was some certainly some really big ones, that would have been quite hard to survive!!

Since the avy level was quite high, we stayed close to the resort. On our last run, we had the chance to bump into Brian, which happen to be in charge of the patrol. We venture to a ridge slightly out of bounds and were able to get some our best turns of the day in!

The following day was nice, clear and without much wind. I was still quite concern about the avalanche, so we stuck to pretty much the same run Brian took us down.

We then bump into Justin Abbiss and Robert McGilliguddys (exactly like the Doctor who invented the Fireball!!!) who are both here to give a hand to Brian with the patrol.

We tagged along the guys and head towards Paper Trees.

After a little hike and some traversing on the way down, the received a call from Brian concerning an avalanche that happened in a nearby bowl. One person was missing. They quitted us and rushed down towards mid-station to help out with the rescue organization.

The full story can be found on the Gulmarg Snow Safety page, but to make a long story short, one skier triggered a class 3 avalanche that carried him for 300-400m and down a 15m waterfall. The skier was fully burried, but he was rescued by his skiing partner and miraculously was unharmed. The lucky guy only lost his poles! His skis stays on the whole time and didn't even broke his legs or injured him in any way!

Nevertheless, this call certainly took our stoke level down quite a bit! We stuck to our plans and went down to the paper trees. This was the first time I was really hitting those trees. Some part of them was quite tight, but a bit lower down, it opened up and we were able to cruise down.

We skinned up and made another laps before heading down to hit the bottle of Jim Beam!

The following morning, as I was having breakfast with Robert, he informed me that he would be going up and digging pits to try to see the weak layer that failed in the involvement. Since I am not a big fan of digging pits, I figured, it would be interesting to see how the pros are doing!

We spend more than half of the day with him. It was also quite interesting to ski around their usual bombing route. This was certainly some adventure skiing as some south facing aspects are really bushy and rocky! This must be quite a challenge to ski this route when the avalanche danger is quite high and staying safe.

Anyway, it was certainly quite instructive and I was quite glad to have spend that day with Robert and M. Anward, a local Kashmiri ski patrol. We took off and went for some skiing. Since an other weather system bringing snow was coming, we figured it might be the last time we could make it up the second stage for this trip. The clouds had moved in and definitively cut both the visibility and our motivation for another run.

Last night was quite interesting. As we were trying to sleep, we heard people screaming and yelling at each other. After a little while, I went out to ask them to shut up. I then found 3 russians trying to hold down an other drunk russian guy who was pissed drunk. Unfortunately for the 3 fellows, the man was really strong and not quite willing to let them win. Anyway, after some time, they walked him back to his room. To be sure he wouldn't come out, they locked him in his room. He was so vodka-intoxicated, that he broke the window and jumped off it…. He didn't get hurt and didn't do much after though….

Today, the stormed had moved in. The second stage of the gondola was closed. The snow was falling much dryer than what we had experienced with the previous storm. We figured a run down towards Babareshi would be a good idea. Babareshi is a village located down of Gulmarg but still quite much higher than Tangmarg. Going to the north end of the plateau where Gulmarg is located gave us a view of quite much things we haven't seen yet, like the big army base, the Indian Mountaineering school and some more poma lifts (for beginners run). We took the road that was going around the children park. When the roads ends up, you keep walking for 2 minutes and you are now at the top of the run.

Unfortunately, it was now around noon at the initial nice and light powder was now quite wet. The run down to Babareshi is quite steep and the beginning but quickly becomes flat. Since I was still concern about the snowpack we stuck some treed ridges.

The first taxi that came by us was filled up with people staying at the same other as we where. We jumped in their taxi and made it down to Tangmarg for lunch and some more pastry from the SnowBakery!

So here I am sitting in my hotel room and watching outside some quite nice snow falling…. It is fairly frustrating not to be able to make it up the second stage when it is snowing. It is even more frustrating not to be able to hit the usual back up run down from Gulmarg since the snow level is not low enough…

We are still here for about 4 days, so we'll see what happen!

Cheers,
evans

Down times in Gulmarg

2011-02-09T07:20:00.000-08:00

The past days have been fairly hard on the moral! After cursing about the blue sky and wanting more snow, we are now cursing at the (too much) snow we are currently receiving.

This year is not a really great snow year for Gulmarg. On a good year, you can pretty much ski anything around the town and even ski down to the other town that lay about 1000m down from Gulmarg call Tangmarg. This is usually the ski plan when a good snow storm is hitting Gulmarg and the gondola is not opening.

I have understand that the gondola cannot withstand much wind and whenever a major storm hit Gulmarg, they shut the upper section down. For the past 5 days, we are left without the access to the great alpine terrain surrounding us.

On our first day, we checked our alternatives: the old chairlift?

Don't think it has run in a long time!

The poma lift?

Sorry. Maintenance in progress.

Anyway, I don't think we would have ski on the golf course! It is an interesting experience to see how the people can enjoy the parcel of winter they are having with gear we would have thrown away without a single second of hesitation!

Since we could't ski down to Tangmarg, we took a shared taxi (20 roupies per person=50cents) down to visit the town and it's market.

This is a quite major hub comparing to the tiny Gulmarg. After wandering around some hanging dead chicken and some not so fresh looking fruit, we made it to the Snow Bakery!

This is certainly a stop everyone coming to Gulmarg should do! Not only it is really cheap, but it is really tasty and fulfilling!

The clearout in the weather made us thing we might be able to get on the second stage of the gondola…. Wrong!

Since we were halfway up, we decided to give a go to what is call Mary's Shoulder. It is an about 100-150m vertical run just next to the gondola. Since we were already in the need for some turns we gave it a go for couples of lap.

The snow was quite heavy but we were still able to enjoy it!

As we skied down to our hotel, it was quite warm and the snow that was falling was much rather to some nasty sleet than the cold powder we were hoping for. The slush-fest continue until the next day and as good powder-princesses, we called it off!

We figured it might be cool to test the public transportation from Tangmarg back to the capital Srinagar to just spend the day. The public bus cost only 20 roupies a person for an about 2 hours ride to 'downtown'. Srinagar was quite busy even if it was during the weekend.

Here's the proof that much of the things you see on the internet as: 'Only in India' are true!

It is funny to say that even if the scenery of Kashmir is full of army guys armed with machine guns, I feel safer than in some places in USA that I have been… It might be a ticking bomb, but doesn't seems quite problematic at the time I am visiting. By talking with people that are not at their first visit in the area, the concluded the same thing as I am….

Back to the skiing! We spend the past two days hitting Monkey Hill. This hill of about (again)150m vertical is laying just looker's left of the first stage of the gondola. We decided to ski it because it offers a much better pitch than the first stage of the gondola.

On the first day, my dad was sick and wasn't skiing any good…

He nevertheless ski for 3 runs before we called it off. The weather as cooled down and the snow is now a bit better than what we experienced in the past days at the same elevation.

Today, the gondola was supposed to open, but due to the …. hum….. kashmir organization and lifestyle, it didn't. The extra guys needed to shovel up the upper unloading station just showed up at around 10h30 leading the avalanche crew up only about 12h00...We went back to the Monkey's and ski some quite decent powder.

Tomorrow is supposed to be THE day every skier in Gulmarg has been waiting for the past days. The problem is the past storm system has dropped about 2m of snow at the top of the mountain. The guys responsible of the avalanche control has triggered some quite unsurvivable avalanche in their control and a lot of the bowls and gullies has already triggered naturally. A weak snowpack that receive a large new load a snow with a blue sky is an explosive recipe for catastrophe in the backcountry.

I certainly gonna have to refrain myself to ski any too exposed stuff in the coming days as the resort is offering some quite limiting terrain….

Weirdly enough, I am now hoping for no new snow for couples of days!

evans

Now exploring the south end of Gulmarg!

2011-02-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

You have to know that Gulmarg 'resort' consist of two gondola that are link one after the other. The first stage is giving access to a rather treed area with not much vertical. The second stage is the one giving you access to 1000m vertical of pure alpine ridges.

The northern end of the mountain gives access to a terrain that easily end up to the gondola. The southern end gives access to some nice north facing ridges that mostly drains down towards a small village call Drang.

The weather on our first day didn't change much from what we had experienced in Gulmarg since our arrival: warm and sunny. We kept working on our physical conditions and hike everyday to mid-station.

After exploring the north end of Gulmarg, we figured we could explore the southern end of the mountain. The access to the very end of the south ridge is quite straight forward since you can ski down without much effort (beside avoiding the rocks!) We bumped into a guide that called us a taxi that would be waiting for us at the end of the run. We were then all set to make this 2000m vertical journey!

We skied down the very last gully. The snow was good and we didn't connect much with rocks giving us some confidence back! There was quite a lot of tracks as it weeks everyone skiing in Gulmarg as done the village run! Between the rocks, there was more than enough space to make nice turns!

The first 1500m were really nice but the 500m left were a totally different story! The thin snowpack and the warm temperatures of the past days have turn the run into a crunchy-tree-avoiding-rocky run.

Nevertheless, I was quite glad to have try this run. I don't think you necessary need a guide to run this (even if this is what most people are doing!) since you pretty much have to follow the tracks. On a regular good snow year, you can ski all the way down to Drang.

The snow was so good on the south side that we decided to try it again but hike our way back to the resort. As on our previous run, we hit some great snow on the top of the run. About 800m down, we strapped our ski on our back and start hiking around the ridge. We surprisingly ended up at the top of a nice little gully facing east and totally untracked. The turns were some of the smoothest so far in Gulmarg!

After skiing down this little gully, we slapped our skins and start to hike to the next ridge. We again ended up on the top of some nice looking gully! Even if it was getting a bit late in the day, we decided to give it a go.

After some smooth and soft turns, we again hiked around an other ridge!

This was the one bringing us back to the plateau where the gondola is! An hour or so later, we were finally back to our hotel after a strenuous 7 hours pretty much non-stop trip! This little adventure just brought to my mind how big the terrain in Gulmarg is!

Today was a much quiet day! After our daily hike to the mid-station, the clouds rolled in at the top of the mountain and as we got to the top, the winds where howling and the visibility was really poor.

We made it to the nearby Afarwat south bowl where we linked turns all the way down.

Since the second stage of the gondola was closed, we figured it would be a good time to have a little beacon practice.

The snow that is falling at the moment is quite wet.

The freezing level is supposed to drop down in the coming days as more precipitation are supposed to hit the area! I hope to see if the legend of Gulmarg can live up to it's reputation!

Cheers,
evans

Exploring the North End of Gulmarg

2011-01-31T08:23:00.000-08:00

After spending one day walking around and visiting pretty much all the hotels and accommodation available in Gulmarg, we finally our best guest was The Pine Palace. With somewhat reliable internet, hot water and central heating, even my Dad found it comfy!

With the accommodation settle, we moved to what we were here to do: SKI!

With a really bad snow year and no snow in the past 2 weeks, we weren't expecting much. To get use to the altitude (Gulmarg is at about 3000m), we decided to skin to mid-mountain. The tiny climb of 400m took us about 1h30 thanks to the altitude!

The visibility was rather low and we didn't venture too far. We skied Apharwat North Bowl and found some pretty surprisingly good snow…. and a lot of rocks! The problem is the snowpack is quite shallow and weak and doesn't cover quite much the sharp rocks nicely hidden under.

The rather foggy weather cut our motivation for our second day. The (about) 2cm of snow on the ground didn't excited us much either.

We skinned all the way up to mid-station where the visibility was still quite bad.

We jumped in the gondola and the clouds seemed to get thinner and thinner and at the top we were welcomed by a great inversion!!!

Stoked to get some great weather, we hiked and hit the backside of Apharwat to what is called the Shark's fin. As we were skinning up, we realized the overnight snowfall was probably about 15-20cm! The snow was nice and my dad was starting to get his skiing confidence back when he hit a rock that leaves him airborne.

Here he is showing his natural flying talent!

Fortunately, he didn't get hurt, but we figured we had to stay alert at all time!

We hiked back to the front and ski down Khilanmarg Bowl 2. We had some surprisingly good visibility almost all the way down this about 1200m vertical run. Always alerted, we made it down without any other big misadventure!

Today was really a great day, blue sky, mild temperature but no new snow. We toured a bit further far the backside of Apharwat.

As our morning hike put us behind most of the skiers, our planned run as been already skied. We didn't changed our plans and made it down this rather chopped-up snow.

Again, the view was really stunning!

The mountains surrounding Gulmarg are certainly some of the most impressive I have personally seen. It is really a shame the snowpack is so thin, because the terrain the gondola gives access is one of the best I have experienced!

The lack of snow is forcing the skiers to share the snow leaving us to not ski fresh pow at every turn… I guess it could be worst!

Again, there isn't much snow on the forecast for this week, but fortunately, it seems like it will change over the weekend!

In the meanwhile, we keep on experiencing India with is….. surprising food!

Cheers,

evans

Directly from the foot of the Himalaya

2011-01-28T18:45:00.000-08:00

For all of you reading the blog much for the skiing part, well you can skip this one since for the first time, there isn't no even a single skiing pictures!

We finally made it to Gulmarg yesterday evening where we are to stay for the next 3 weeks.

After spending three incredible weeks to Japan, I flew back to Montreal where I spent 53 hours before catching my plane to go to Delhi. The 4.3cm of snow on the ground and the temperature threatening to plunge under the -30 degrees didn't give me any temptation to stay there much longer!

After celebrating my brother birthday and trying to catch up a bit on laundry, I jumped on the plane with my Dad for a nice 16 hours journey!

We decided to stay in Delhi for 2 days to walked around and to get a taste of that buzzing city! We landed at midnight local time and I was quite glad my Dad had previously arranged a taxi to our hotel since I felt quite mentally slow to face the massive crowd of touts and corrupt taxi driver waiting for us at the airport!

We spend our first day mostly walking around town in the Old Delhi part.

We used the metro to move around town and it worked great! Being just before their national holiday, a lot of the official places where closed leaving us a much smaller list of things to do. We walked around Chadni Chowk which used to be the main street of Delhi which is now an unstructured and diverse market.

This rather smelly and poor part of Delhi offered some scenery not for the fainted hearts!

On India's 62 years of independence, we went to visit the much nicer and modern part of Delhi which was used as the central place of the celebration.

After some more sightseeing, we were done and went back to our hotel and buy our plane tickets for the following day to go to Srinagar.

Srinagar (pronouncing Chrinagar) is the capital of Kashmir. After a flight of about an hour, we landed to a rather unsnowy place. From the airport, we caught a taxi to go to Gulmarg. You don't have to worry about not being able to get a ride! About 30 drivers are waiting for your just outside of the airport. The price is fixed at 1400 roupies (30$) and off we were!

We didn't had eyes big enough to see and to capture everything that was going on!

Sitting in the taxi, we were just stunned by the daily life of the Kashmiri.

The road really started to climb after a while and the snowbanks moved from nothing to…. almost nothing! The hard crust laying on top of about 25-40cm of snow on the ground doesn't impress me that much!

After an hour or so of driving, we finally arrived in Gulmarg. We booked a night for two days at our arrival at The Pine Palace. We will walked around town to see the hotels and the price as a lot of rooms are empty due to the really bad snow year.

The snowbanks aren't any impressive and the forecast isn't too promising either… I guess it's your turn to send me out some tits deep powder shots and tease me about how I should be at your skiing spot!!

Looking forward to strap my skis in the coming days!

evans

The snow factory finally stopped!

2011-01-22T20:25:00.000-08:00

The snow rolled in as expected. Even if the visibility was crap, we decided to go explore Mt Chisenupuri. I was told it was a good backcountry spot and by using a single ride up the lift of Mt Chisenupuri resort for 3$, it certainly also has an easy access! You just have to skin up straight from the lift.

It all sounds pretty easy, but when you add up a typical Niseko storm to the story, everything gets a bit more complicated…

On our way up, we meet some of the army guys practicing their winter skills. Looking them skiing with leather boots fitted with some kind of primitive harness on skinny cross-country skis down the hill on some windpack snow was…. entertaining!

We kept going until we couldn't see much! We triggered a small slab going up. With no visibility and unstable snow made us ski down. We didn't take the usual way down and ended up on the wrong side of the creek. You can usually get some pretty good sidecountry runs just off the main chair of the resort and ended up just where we were…. but on the other side. Good things for us we founded a shallow spot to cross.

Then something really weird happened, the snow stopped, the wind slowed down, the sky cleared out and the sun even showed up at some point! Since the top gates (access to the backbowls) haven't open up this season, we hitted the resort hoping for them to open up. Unfortunately, they didn't. We turned to plan B: Ski the resort and its fresh pow!

We skied around the resorts and enjoyed the last 25+ overnight storm. I don't have to tell you how excited I was to ski fresh pow on a clear day!

The avalanche report forecasted the opening of the top gates. We went back to the resort all fired up to get the goods. The high winds turned down our expectations since it kept the upper lifts closed. We went back to Mizuno no Sawa (avalanche restricted area) for some nice sweet runs! The first opening of the area last year led to a great success and it is still running in full swing this winter.

We went back and had a great deep run! This is really a great spot to hang out when most of the resort is tracked and the access to the backcountry is closed!

We ended up our day with a great dinner that JS (a Black Diamond Guide) and his girlfriend prepared!

For our final day of skiing, we were blessed by probably one of the best day of the season: 20cm overnight, no wind, a blue sky and the first opening of the top gates of the whole season! The snow back there was soooooo good!

Amélie really loved the snow!

It was deep, light and even.

The only thing we had to say about the day was: too short! Since we had to catch a bus at 16h00 to go back at the airport , we had to cut the day short. It was really frustrating to pack our stuff in the resort parking lot while looking at the great weather! Anyway, it was a great way to end the Japan part of my world tour!!

I am actually writing down this episode from the plane going back to Canada! I am to spend the weekend in Montreal from where I will take the plane to go to India. The plan is to visit a bit Delhi before catching a connecting flight to go to Srinagar from where we'll take a taxi to Gulmarg.

The snow hasn't hitten much Gulmarg this year so far and the avy conditions looked pretty sketchy at the moment.

I just hope the snow will follow me to India!

From high peaks to coast

2011-01-17T03:07:00.000-08:00

We decided to stay a bit longer in Tokachi-dake to keep on exploring some spots I haven't ski and enjoying the onsens.

The weather did get slightly better, but the sun was quite far from us!!!

There is a tiny bit less snow than around the same time last year, but still enough to enjoy most of the common runs

As we were cooking our fancy lunch/dinner featuring cheap scallops (8 huges for 2$!!!) at our car, Neil Hartmann and the guys from Car Danchi showed up in the same parking lot as we were! Those guys are filming snowboard movies and living in their cars!

They were up around Tokachi-dake area to film for their next movies.

After a day spend skiing around Fukiage Spa and trying a different run around Furano-dake, we catched up with the guys that were heading to a cabin to hang out for the night!

The invitation to not sleep in a car for a night sounds quite nice (for Amelie, it actually sounds like the best thing ever as the past nights have been quite cold!) We checked out some footage they took, drank sake and plum wine and ate a lot!

This really entertaining evening leads to a day spend with them looking how they actually shoot their movies. What a nice experience!! It was great to see how the pros are shooting, setting up the lines and lining up the shots! We again cut the day a bit short due to the cold temperature that froze both the cinematographer and the riders!

From Tokachi-dake we hitted the road west towards Sapporo.

Apparently, some storms have hitten the west part of the island while we were up at Tokachi-dake. From the snowbanks and everyone shovelling both their driveway and their roofs, it was a major one.

We finally scouted a nice open spot not so far from the road around Furubira (a tiny fisherman village west of Otaru) and decided to give it a go! Even if the snowbanks around town were giants, the snowpack was rather shallow and weak.

We play it safe and made it to the car skiing!

Don't have to tell you we had some weird looking by the locals as we were skiing down the streets!!!

We woked up and went to buy breakfast at the groceries. We had one of the biggest surprise of our trip when we spot 2 guys walking off from the beach with.... SURF BOARDS!!! Guess some like it cold! I do have to agree that the waves looked rather big.

The high point of the road 998A has been recommended by Neil. As we drove up, we found some awesome backcountry. There is some steep lines, trees and probably some car shuttle runs to be done up there. This is probably my nicest discovery of the trip! Since we were (again) in some kind of blizzard, we didn't venture too far off. We lined up some turns not too far from the car and had a few laps. This is an area I will for sure explore more sometimes!!!

We just got to Niseko to get some good backcountry runs and some slackcountry before going back home (sniff, sniff!!!!). It has average about 20 cm per day for the last 10 days, so it looks quite promising! At the time of writing, it is PUKING outside!

evans

Snowy snowland of Hokkaido!

2011-01-11T04:05:00.000-08:00

The snow just kept on falling in Niseko!

More than 2m (6 feet) of snow as hitted the resort over the past week.

But even if it was puking, we made the hard (and a bit weird) decision to leave Niseko to explore new venues on Hokkaido.

One range of mountain located in the southeast of the island with peak nearly as high as the one in the Daisetsuzan National park (park that features most of the highest mountain on Hokkaido) as gotten my attention. From the topographical map and by the view I was able to get on Google Earth, it was looking promising.

So we took off to get a look at it! After about a day of driving, we were able to get our first view of the mountains.

Unfortunately, the closest we were from the mountain, the less skiable they looked. The high peaks seemed to present some decent lines, but the access would required a lot of hiking and bushwhacking. To top it off, there wasn't much snow on the ground next to the road… And by not much snow, I mean less than a foot. I guess I have to call it a big FAIL!

Nevertheless, this drive brought us back to Nissho Pass, where we scouted some really skiable terrain last year on a day off. We decided to give it a go! We drove up to the pass into some stormy weather. We dressed up and made our way up!

It was really cold!!!

One of the coldest I have been in a long time hiking up! It was really windy but we found some nice sheltered snow to make our way down! Happy birthday to me!!!

The storm just get worst at the end of the day and being in such an exposed spot, we figured it would not be so skier-friendly the following day.

After an evening spend eating Okonomiaki and Takoyaki and sipping warm sake, We went back to a sure spot: Tokachi-dake!

The snowbanks from the parking lot gave us the assurance that there was enough snow to get a good day. The weather even cleared out a bit leaving us the impression that we even get some sunshine!

We were sooooooo wrong! Soon after we started skinning up, the clouds move back and the wind picked up! Amelie did get very cold and even with two down jackets on and a stop half way down to warm her feet up, there was nothing else to do than to rush down back to the car!

So the forecast for the followings days are mostly snow, snow and snow. This is one of the best snow-strike I have seen on Hokkaido of my 3 travels here!

We might head back near Niseko to explore some new backcountry spots if it ever stop to snow!

evans

Snow was waiting for us!

2011-01-07T03:25:00.000-08:00

We finally got our car. And what a car it is! I always dreamt about driving a Delica, but I have honestly never thought about driving such a pimp one! Some work was done to build a bed in and we are now all set to hit the road!!!

Before leaving our cozy little cabin, we invited JS L'Heureux, an expat from Quebec working this winter as a lead guide for Black Diamond Tours for some homemade Okonomiaki, our favorite typical dish.

With not much new snow and not being much a groomer fan, we headed out to Mt. Shiribetsu close to Niseko for a backcountry run. Even if the snow on the ground was not able to cover all the 'Sassa' (the green leaves sticking out of the ground), we were still able to get some really nice turns in! The bottom was rather soft and we had about a foot of fresh on top!

Some new snow brought us back to the resort hoping to get some decent turns! The 20cm that fell overnight certainly soften up the conditions, but I was really hoping for more!

We went to the backside of Annuupuri (Mountain on which Niseko resorts are located) for a run I have never done. After putting our skins on in the backcountry in some kinds of stormy weather, we started skinning up. The weather just get worst and worst. Since a fatality happen 2 days ago around the area we were skiing and a little slab was forming as we were getting higher, we stopped our ascension short from the summit. Nevertheless, we still got some really nice deep and soft turns.

On our first night sleeping in the van, as usually, we had slightly opened the windows. The following morning brought us a storm inside the van!!!

After 20 minutes of cleaning inside, we stepped out of the van and realized there was about 1.5 feet of fresh on the ground! We, as you can certainly imagine, rushed ourselves to Niseko to hit this massive storm that was still in full effect!

We rode inbounds and were able to get steady faceshots runs after runs! We skied until 16h30 in a storm that was continuously filling up our tracks!

We were quite glad to have been able to ski this storm that was easing up!

After spending the night in a closed window van, we woked up with a foot of new overnight snow on the ground. The no brainer was to go back to the hill as it was snowing at about 10cm an hour in some points! We tried Niseko Hirafu as a stomping ground for this storm. The first few runs were nice with not many people on the slopes. It soon began to be crowded. The base of Niseko Hirafu is the closest to much of the bars and the accommodation avalaible, it for sure attracts the tourist! The peak gates remained closed all day and we ski the glades that didn't get too much tracked. In fact, we were able to get some really nice deep and soft turns again all day.

At the time of writing, it is still snowing out there and it looks again promising for tomorrow!

From Niseko, your powder reporter!
evans

World ski tour 2011

2011-01-02T03:05:00.000-08:00

I'm back again for another winter full of adventures and powder turns!!!

Winter has taken some time to settle in Quebec. While Western Canada and USA were getting hammered by one of the best start ever, we were getting hitted by major rainfall. My training for the season has started quite soon as I was quite motivated by the upcoming season. It included the typical bedroom training and hiking my local mountain, Mont-Sainte-Anne.

I also did my yearly pilmgrinage to the Santa Claus day at Le Massif where, one day a year about a thousand of people gather dress as Santa to fund Dr Clown foundation.

I have also been fairly buzy writing article this fall and getting some of my story published.

I am also quite glad to have been able to hook up sponsor by Outdoor Research, Scarpa, Gregory, Leki, Darn Tough and IO-Bio.

This winter is going not to feature a winter long roadtrip but a winter long journey around the world.

First stop: Japan!

Even if la Nina brough a crazy good start to North America, canned coffee, ramen soup, heated toilet seat and cheap sushi has brought me back on the island. I will stay in Japan until the 21st. I will then fly back home to Montreal to catch up with my Dad for a 4 weeks trip to India where we will go skiing in Gulmarg. On my way back, I will stop in Eastern Europe, where I will be joined by my friends for 2 weeks and by Amelie for another 2 weeks.

We landed on the 30th after having to change flights because New York airport was disfunctionnal because of a snowstorm. 15 hours after we left Montreal, we finally arrived in Tokyo, where Amelie and I were to spend New Year.

After wandering around the city and enjoying what really looked like an asleep giant, we move towards Zojoji Temple where a celebration was held to celebrate the end of 2010. It was not the biggest thrill ever to witness 3000 balloons fliying off, but still quite nice to live. We didn't party much since we were quite tired and jetlagged from our trip.

On the New Year, we travelled to Hokkaido and then to Niseko.

I was quite happy to meet with Clayton again at the Black Diamond Lodge. He is the only one able to get me a van in Japan at a decent price! Since the car we were to use was not ready, he let us stay in a nice cozy cabin next to his main lodge.

Unfortunately for us, the snowbanks looked hard and much smaller than what we expected. From last year experience, there is about a meter less snow on the ground.

The conditions were not that hard, but we can definitively use more snow!

There is some snow in the forecast in a few days so hopefully, it will be dump up to Hokkaido's reputation!

Beginning the 6th winter of Snowchasing!
evans

Spring skiing in Québec

2010-04-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

(a little trip report from Easter! better late than never!!!)

Still in the need for skiing, I took some days off to go skiing in Quebec's rocky mountains: the Chic-Chocs.

The Chic-Chocs are about 6 hours east of Québec City and 8-9 hours from Montreal. They are the closest you can be from "mountains" around this part of Canada. The tallest mountain around the park is Mt Jacques Cartier at 1268meters high.

Amelie had won a nice trip for 2 at the Vallée Taconique near Mt Saint-Pierre. The trip included a day of sled skiing and a night at the nice mountain hut on a private terrain. We were welcomed by the owner Giovanni Mancini who is operating the Vallée Taconique for the third year from Mt Saint-Pierre village.

From there, you jump on a sled with your camping gear and you are off for a 20-30minutes ride to their skiing ground. After dropping our gear at the luxiourous ski mountain hut, we were off for our first ride. It was really warm (read here +15Celcius) so we were in full spring skiing mode.

The terrain consists of 5 main courses that have been cut into resort-like runs and one tree skiing run. I have been greatly surprised of how steep the runs are. The terrain is rather small, but they are looking about expanding the tree skiing in between the runs.

The sled was waiting for us at the bottom and quickly drive us back to the top. The sled setup is really nice since you don't have to wait for the ride to go back up.

A typical day includes 8 runs for about 4000meters vertical. There wasn't any others clients that day, so we didn't rush and fully enjoyed the view of the surroundings.

Our guide dropped us at the lodge after we were done and we watched the sunset dropping right in front of us. The lodge is really nicely equiped with 2 fondue-set and a kitchen set much better than what I actually have at my place!!!

On the following morning, Giovanni came to pick us up with the sled to drive us back to Mont Saint-Pierre. On our ride back some avalanche path catched my attention and we decided to give them a try.

The temperature was now really warm so we were sinking fairly deep hiking up. We picked what I tought as the safest way down possible and we skied rather fast to get back to the bottom after some really hard carved turns.

From there, we drove to the Parc de la Gaspésie to meet some friends. It has been a really bad year for snow quantities in Québec and the Park had been hitted hard. The snowpack was really thin and rocks were everywhere. We hiked to the Mur des Patrouilleur at Mt Albert to check out how it looks. It was the warmest day I ever ski (+21 Celcius) and I was actually fairly concerns with avy danger. After watching some cornices breaking starting some huge wet snow avalanche, I decided to check out a mellower run that was seeing less sun.

The run was actually really nice as we were carving our turns in only 4-6in of corn. After our runs, one of the park ranger came asking that everyone should head down as soon as possible as one of the creek that we are crossing hiking up was swallowing and threatening of getting out of his bed....

What you actually have to know is that the Park de la Gaspésie is probably one of the less skier friendly place around North America. They only let you ski some designated snow fields and giving you fines if you are caught outside of the designated areas... This is a major clash from everywhere I have skied but we are so different in Québec......

So the following day, there wasn't much left to ski since they closed Mt Albert access and most of the others mountain didn't have enough snow to ski....

We decided to drive back to Mt Saint-Pierre area to ski around the same spot we skied two days ago. Well the warm temperatures have hitted hard and some signs of wet slab were everywhere. We put the skins on anyway figuring we might give it a try anyway. Well 2 wet slabs were triggered in about 5 minutes interval on a similar aspect of the one we were looking to ski.

That did cut our inspiration and we decided to build a little kicker and spend the rest of the afternoon enjoying this out-of-season temperature!

This close my 2009-2010 season! I'm now looking forward at paddling the rivers of Quebec until next season!

I will be working hopefully full time until next december. Until then, I will be working on putting another trip for next winter!!!

See you next winter!
evans

Tomamu Catski and the end of the Japan tour

2010-03-22T09:56:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the last report, I guest that sleeping in a bed as made me lazy!...

So, we left Otaru and drive towards Tomamu resort. We drove all the way to Shimukappu and park the car to get some sleep. During that night, it rained really hard and the wind was shaking the van...

The next morning brought us exactly what we thought all night... a frickin ice ring to ski on!
The wind was still up so all the top lifts were closed leaving only the lower lifts running... After gathering our motivation in the ski lodge for about 3 hours, we finally get ready to check out what the conditions were like.

After a single run, we packed our stuff and headed to the hotel (yeah, yeah an hotel!!!)

Outdoor Japan set me up to review the catski operation of Tomamu and the resort has been keen enough to get us a room at the Tower hotel!

The room was great and we were lucky to be able to watch, listen (and not really understand) some Japanese TV. Do you know that snowball fight is actually a sport (with tournament, teams and coaches) in some part of Japan!????
Don't have to say that we weren't much looking forward to ski the following day.....

Well overnight, it snowed!

With the snow come back our motivation to go skiing and check out the catski operation!
Since everything was happening in Japanese, we didn't understand much of what was happenning; at some point, we even thought that we were going heli-ski, but unfortunately the high winds grounded the chopper.....
But we finally took off and when it was time to ski, we weren't the tourist anymore!!!
About 20-25cm coupled with some high winds turned the conditions from stay-at-home-and-drink-beer to wow-I-never-though-it-could-be-that-great-today!!!

The terrain is not super steep, but really nice for intermediate and advance skier. Of course, the staff know their terrain and all the run we did were pretty nice.
We were able to lap 3 runs/1000m vertical before lunch.
At lunch, we were quite suprise to realize that is was to happen inside a teepee, with a chef cooking the food on the site!
The lunch was much better than what we usually have (which is quite often nothing!!!)!!!!!!!
After few coffees to stay awake after this huge 4 courses lunch we took off for 3 more runs and another 1000m vertical!
This was quite a great day! Considering, that at some point we thought about pretending that we were sick not to go, it was even better!!!!
From Tomamu, we made the drive back to Niseko where we had to drop the car. Niseko Village was so stoked about the article I wrote about Mizuno no Sawa, that they offered us some pass for the day!!! Clayton, from the Black Diamond Lodge came up with us and showed us the back bowls. There was about 10cm of fresh snow sitting on some packed powder. We then lapped the backbowl making gigantic, fast GS turns.

After going a bit everywhere on the mountain, we finally took off when the blizzard that was happening forced the closure of the top lifts.

Clayton offered us to drop the car directly at the airport! That was really a good thing for us since we still had some stuff to do before leaving!

Before dinner, we had some time to kill so we walked into the best tele store in Niseko call Toryu. That happen to be owned by one of Japan's top telemark skier Yutaka Takanashi. Yutaka saw the picture of Babiche's skis and all the staff in there were pretty excited to check out his homemade skis!! It is quite a bummer that we had to leave Niseko, because they really wanted us to go out and tour with them.... maybe next year?!!!

After feasting over some Okonomyaki, we drove to Jozankei to catch up with Neil Hartmann that, at the beginning of the winter, gave me some quite good backcountry spots!
We met him at his really cool cafe and had few beers talking about each other winter and future plans!Then was the final day in Japan. After some final shopping, packing all the gear and dropping the van (without a single scratch!!!)We ate as much as we could and dry as much as we could to bring some Japan with us!!!
The following was some regular airplane travel (wait, sit, passport-please, now boarding, sleep, watch TV, etc.....) After about 26 hours of travel (including some waiting time!) I was quite glad to be back in Quebec city.

This was a great way to celebrate a 5th season of snowchasing by going to Japan! I still have some plans for next winter so hopefully, I will be able to nail a plan to entertain you!!!!

Thanks for following me this winter and I hope you enjoyed it!!!

Cheers,
evans

Powder, swimming, wet snow and sampling!

2010-03-13T05:19:00.000-08:00

From Floating Island, we went back to .... Floating Island. It would be lying to say that the snow was pilling really fast, but is was pilling constantly! What began with some decent conditions that finally turned out to the best conditions we had in weeks!

We stayed there 2 more days lapping different lines and exploring different ridges and bowl around the tunnel.

The north side features longer lines and steeper terrain than the south side. It also feature a sketchiest ski out since it goes through multiple gullies and natural runouts.
Since we were running out of food, we drove back to Asahikawa. By looking at the forecast, we realized there was some snow forecasted on the following day. We thought that Furano might be a good guess.

When we woke up, we realized that the snow that was forecasted as changed into a massive windstorm..... without any snow.

No new snow means that we were left with only the groomed runs to ski. After a total of one run. We poached the run under the chair lift that link the Kitanomine and the Furano side. It was a line I was thinking off since last year when I first visited Furano.

The conditions weren't that great so we though that maybe under the tram might be a better try. By looking at all the tracks, we weren't the first that though about skiing under the tram. We skied it fast in between two trams. When I got at the bottom, I wasn't able to see Babiche. After a little while, I hiked back to try to spot him. He finally showed up, hiking from the run I just skied out.
The reason for his little hike was that he fell into a creek! He showed up all wet and soaked up! That kind of cut the day as he needed to dry out! That was quite funny and I did spend a lot of time laughing at him!
We left Furano to head to Sounkyo to ski Kurodake. The wind were forecasted to be low, so it seemed like a good time to try that resort. As we were getting ready in the parking lot, we realized that there wasn't much skier heading up on the tram! It turned out that probably only 20 skiers took the tram that day.

If you ever think about going to ski Kurodake, there isn't anything to ski inbound. The tram leads you to a double chair lift that covert much more distance than vertical. What is good about Kurodake is the backcountry. From the top of the double chair, it is fairly easy and straight forward to hike up the peak of Kurodake.

From there, you have access to some really nice terrain. If you are not in the mood for a little adventure (as we were), you can follow the main gully from the top for a nice mellow run.

There was a little windcrust from the top, but it did get better lower down. What we had was 6in of fresh dry snow laying on packed powder.

Since the forecast was calling for harsher wind, we though that going toward a north facing tree shelter run was probably our best guest. We made the drive back down, towards Sapporo Kokusai just south of Otaru. From the parking lot of Sapporo Kokusai, there is a lot of good backcountry available. We went for the most obvious line that is going straight down to the road. The hike was fast and what we skied was some steady wet snow.

We drove back up to Otaru to visit one of the coolest town that I visited on Hokkaido. Near the port, there is a touristic street with a lot (and by a lot, I TRULY mean it) of sampling to do. One of my favourite place was a fish market where you could tasted so much different raw, dry and cooked fish!
There are also some Hokkaido's speciality....

We ended up that great day of sampling at the Otaru brewery for the Japanese version of the famous German Dunkel beer!

We are now heading towards Tomamu, where some cm's of snow are on the forecast.

Prost!
evans

Dry-periodisis crisis over!

2010-03-07T17:26:00.001-08:00

The rain and the fog have stopped our motivation short at Myoko and instead of skiing, we just drove straight to Niigata.

It was fairly straight going and (as always) full of interesting road signs....

We took the ferry as planned and then we were off for an 18 hours journey. The ferry was quite comfortable (there was even a free spa onboard!) and the sea was pretty calm so everything went pretty smooth!

There wasn't much to do, so we eat.... and sleep.....
We finally arrived at Tomakomai on Hokkaido at 4h30am. The thought of finally being cold again, not being able to cook a real supper because of the bad weather and putting ice frozen ski boots weirdly seemed quite appealing!

As we drove down of the ferry, we were excited by few cm of fresh snow on the ground and the cold weather....

Since there was a warm front few days ago coupled with some rain, my first plan was to go high, so we drove to Tokachi-dake. The weather was really nice and for the first time, I was able to get a good view at the surroundings mountain.
We put the skins on and started hiking. We soon realized that the rain had hit as high as where we were skinning, since there was a hard layer of ice underneath. Babiche really wanted to go summit Furano-dake, but my motivation was back-order and I just sat down like a kid, decided not to go further. We finally headed down on an unsteady slope that keep changing from smooth to ice.
There was a bit of snow on the forecast, so we drove up towards Kamui Ski Links, where I had such a good time with Amelie. We woke up in the parking lot with about 10cm of wet snow. As it was on my previous trip, the slackcountry of the peak was really nice and we lapped it all day rushing to make sure we were not going to miss a run. It was one of the first day in a while that we were skiing some fresh snow!
Since it was good but a bit wet to our taste, we thought that it might be better a bit up high. So I drove back to Floating Island, where I had some terrific days with my dad.

The slopes on the south side of the tunnel were affected by the sun, so we decided to ski the north side of the tunnel. As we were hiking, we realized that the snow was quite dry and that the crust was not that close to the surface.
We made up our mind to ski a the leeward side (where the wind deposit the snow) of the ridge we were hiking and that was a good decision!
We weren't feeling the crust and there was about a feet of snow everywhere! We lapped it all day not yet really realizing that we were having a real good powder day!!!
After one of our best day in weeks, we were wondering what the conditions would be elsewhere in the area. We drove south towards Sounkyo, where the ski hill call Kurodake is. It was so windy the following morning, that we figured our best bet would be to ski at the floating island once more!The conditions were just getting better and we were skiing in a deep feet of snow! The snow has been falling on and off all day as we were making more and more turns.Our mental health is getting better now with some more snow on the forecast for almost all week and temperature below the freezing level.
We don't feel quite adventurous, so we'll probably stick around the Floating Island a bit more waiting for the conditions to get better across the Island!

A few more powder days and I'll be heal from my dry-periodisis crisis!

evans

(Way too) early spring skiing...

2010-03-01T16:58:00.001-08:00

It hasn't been the greatest week for skiing ever.... with temperatures reaching +10C at the base of most of the resorts around Nagano (including Hakuba), the conditions has been closer to what you would expect from late april...

On top of it, it was pissing rain on Friday.... (nothing to help our motivation level that is now setting at an historic low!)
But even with our motivation quite low, we've manage to kick ourselves to go out skiing! (after drinking canned coffee from the distributing machines....)
We spend our first few days around Hakuba Goryu and Hakuba 47. Those resorts are quite weirdly layout. There are tons of trails on the flat lower part and on the flat top part, but nothing really to link them. And from what I've heard, the patrols are quite tough, so don't really think about poaching the nice steep trees that are everywhere unless you don't mind spending some time in an interrogation room...

So we lapped some blueish runs until we get totally bored and went hiking on the ridge that started at the top of the resorts.
There is some really nice terrain from up there, but the recent warm front has started a cycle of wet avalanches a bit everywhere. So we stayed on some safer lines and enjoy some good times hiking and skiing from the ridge.

The following day, we woke up and the clouds were very low and the temperature wasn't that warm. We finally gather enough motivation to go up Happo-One. To our surprise, it was a nice inversion and a bright, warm, sunny day was waiting for us at the top of the hills!
We run the moguls through millions of Japanese and our biggest challenge was to avoid running into some uncontrolled skiers.
We couldn't hold ourselves down from hiking a bit so we went up the ridge at the top of Happo-One for some mellow turns.
The following day was (as forecasted) a rainy one. From the weather reports it was supposed to rain all the way to the top. Well, we passed on that one and drove south to Omachi to visit the Alpine Museum.
There wasn't any information in English so our visit was rather fast! So we decided to visit a sake brewery and sample some of their production. A good onsen ended up our day.

On the night was a party organized by Outdoor Japan. It is a bilingual magazine that covers outdoor activities happening in Japan and a bit in Asia. I've met the editor at the beginning of January and I was quite stoked to get my hands on the edition that was covering my story!
The rest of the party is a bit blurred and we spent the following day recovering from it!
We were still having one day in Hakuba before driving to Niigata from where we'll be (hopefully!) taking the ferry tonight towards Hokkaido.

So we went out on the ridge at the top of Happo and started hiking.
At the beginning the snow was quite soft, but since the weather was overcasted, the higher we got, the harder the snow was.
We finally made it to the top of Karamatsu-dake from where the wind was really hauling! It was one of the worst wind I have ever experience!!!
We hiked down a bit before finally convincing ourselves to drop in the backcountry.
The snow was rather nice and soft at the top part, but it turned to a more glueish type lower down.
Going down that gully brought us through the most avalanche run-outs I have ever been into.
The warm temperature from the past days and the rain had really get the things moving around here!!!
Fortunately for us, there is a summer road going up the valley between Happo and Hakuba47 that we followed all the way down.
We finally arrived at Hakuba47 in a heavy down pour (again....).
We are in Myoko right now where we might be able to get some motivation to get some turns in if the weather cleared up a bit. From here, we'll drive straight to Niigata.

If we understand properly the ferry schedule and the tsunami travelling advisory is not holding the ferry at the dock, we'll be back on Hokkaido tomorrow!

Cheers,
evans

The spectacular Japanese Alps

2010-02-24T02:03:00.000-08:00

We left Myoko and its nice Japanese vibe to drive towards Hakuba and its buzzling town and resorts. Unfortunately, the resorts around haven't receive the snow that we skied at Seki Onsen. Halfway down our first (and only) run, we just needed some motivation in cans. The conditions were not fast, not hard, but just shear, pure ice!
Since Etienne was to leave on the following day, we turned to the other option Hakuba has to offer: party! After drinking 3.6 liters of sake we went out.... the rest is history that none of us can remember!
The following day, we weren't much in the mood for skating down the hill, so we went to Matsumoto to visit a castle. It was one of the worst sightseeing I ever done! No history, no information, no nothing. Don't waste your time visiting this feodal castle.
We dove back north but this time towards Yuzawa. It is a nice little town nestle in the Japanese Alps with tons of visitors from Tokyo. After a quick call to the brother of a friend of mine, he directed us to Mt Tairappyo for a little tour. It has fallen around 15cm overnight so we were expecting some nice conditions. The way up was fairly easy and from the top, we were able to get our first glimpse of the mountain range.
We were both amaze by how big the mountains were and how steep some lines looked.

We kept ourselves from doing anything too stupid considering the snow conditions and we skied down the main face of the mountain.
Since we skied a west face in late afternoon, the powder had already started to get a bit more wet. The sun is really strong here and it really bakes the snow laying on the south and west facing aspects around.
The following day, we headed with Guillaume and one of his friend to Mt Daigenta to ski some glades he had scouted and who were straight north facing. It seems that is has been really windy around since all the snow we skied were some kind of wind crust.
Considering all this, we drove towards Minakami to ski Tanigawadake Tenjindaira. This tiny little hill (3 double chairs) usually ranked in the top 3 resorts for the most snow in Japan. If you add this statistic to the sick backcountry terrain just next to the hill, you have one of the best option for some great turns.
Unfortunately for us, the weather has started to warm up quite over the freezing level and we had to forgot any plans about riding some fresh, dry pow.

After two laps inbounds, Babiche had a little summit fever, so we packed our gear and started hiking towards Mt Tanigawadake. This big mountain lays just next to the ski hill and offers tons of option for some nice turns.
We made our way slowly to the top enjoying the nice, summer like weather.
From the top, the view was spectacular.
I had previously packed 2 beers and I don't remember having one in a more spectacular place! I can tell you that we enjoyed every sip of it.
After spending as much time as we could up there, it was more than about time that we headed down. The snow was soft and a bit melted by the warm weather.
We skied in some really beautiful light and finally arrived at the car just 15 minutes before total darkness.
That was a really great day out there and I was quite glad Babiche kicked my lazy ass up!
We'll now drive back towards Hakuba to see the spring-like conditions around there before the rain comes (yes there is some rain on the forecast now....)

It looks like it's going to be the last stretch of the Honshu journey since there isn't any rain forecasted on Hokkaido. Hopefully we'll be able to get some more dry stuff before we go back in 3 weeks!

evans