4 ski days in 6 days, 4751km, 9 states and 2 provinces

When we woked up at Heavenly, it was slightly raining, we figured it would be a good idea to head to Sugarbowl. Since this resort is located quite high, we thought it might be snowing.

It was winter time and we were`t able to see much! In some places, there was a bit more than 6 to 8in of wet Sierra cement deposited on top of some melt-freeze conditions. In some other places, it was just some melt-freeze conditions.

Since that new snow pushed the avy hazard, most of the really good terrain was closed. I really wished I can go back some time since the terrain I saw looked really good.

After a last high-class meal with Babiche (salties with ketchup, butter, hot water with honey, jam) I hitted the road overnight towards Utah to be able to bagged another day of skiing.

During a quick stop at BD store for some warranty issue, I realize that Alta was planning to put a lift on Flagstaff mountain (http://friendsofflagstaff.com/). That happen to be the place I was just planning to ski that days. It was a nice and warm bluebird day in Utah before taking off to hit the trailhead, I realize I had no more water... but I had some backup. I don't know why we never carry beer in the backcountry. It has as much energy than a granola bar, you can save the weight of your water bottle and I think it is just the best drink for spring skiing!!

After a quick shower at the Cliff Lodge (... sorry, but no time for the hot tub this time!), I took off to leave to go skiing in Colorado.

I've been able to pull off some passes to go skiing Aspen! So here I was skiing one of the most famous resort in NA. I wasn`t expecting much in terms of skiing since there is so many celebrity that hang out around there that I thought it would be mostly some blueish kind of runs.

I was SO wrong!!! Aspen happen to be an incredible skiing ground. There's everything from tight tree skiing to steep open bowl to everything in between... But for me, the coolest thing about Aspen is their open policy about letting skinning up on the runs to access the backcountry. I was amazed that Aspen was more cool about skinning up on their runs than Whitewater...

I spend all day skiing both Ajax and Aspen Highlands. They both have some really good runs. I think my favorite was Highlands with his big bowl. After letting you been towed by the cat, you can access the peak after a short 15-20min hike. From there, you can either ski back down in the resort or keep hiking to access directly the backcountry. Unfortunately, I had left my avy gear in my car, so I dropped back in the resort.

At the end of my day, I realize their was an Avalanche Awareness going on in Aspen that night I figured it would be nice to walk around that town that literally has more art gallery that ski shops... Actually, their is a lot of stuff to do in Aspen until the end of the season. If you want to visit the best place for free coffee/ granola bars/muffins, it really worth checking it out!

Bud Light Big Air Fridays Snowmass March 20, 27

Core Party featuring Rusted Root Downtown Aspen March 20

Fallen Friends Memorial Event Aspen Highlands March 2110th

Annual KickAspen Big Air Aspen Mountain March 21

Crocs Terrain Park Boot Camp Snowmass March 21, 22

Bud Light Hi-Fi Concert Series featuring Sam Bush Snowmass March 22

Bud Light Hi-Fi Concert Series featuring Ratatat Aspen Mountain March 27

Crocs Terrain Park Boot Camp Snowmass March 28, 29

Red Bull Schnee Tag Snowmass March 28

Helly Hansen Battle in the Bowls Aspen Highlands March 29

www.aspensnowmass.com/travelinfo/events/default.cfm

After the really interesting avalanche awareness, I drove to Copper Mtn. I skied there with Christian, a friend of mine that invited me at is place to check it out. Copper was nice and warm and I had the chance to make my last turns into some nice and slushy moguls facing the south.

After a quick overnight stop to visit one of my cousin in Denver, I started driving East to travel the little bit more than 3000km that separated me from Qc.

Since my car doesn't have a cruise control, I took the time, while driving the Colorado prairies to set one up with my camera tripod. It took me about 2 hours to finally having one set up that worked great.

I then pushed the limit of multitasking in Nebraska by being able to drive, eat, and read one issue of (www.theskijournal.com/) and two issues of Offpiste (www.offpistemag.com/).

After 20 hours of driving and 3 gas-stop (not that interesting considering their marketing...), I crashed near Detroit.

A quick 3 hours nap had put me back on the track to hit the last part of my trip. The equally boring Ontario needed me to read two issues of Powder (www.powdermag.com/) to not fall asleep.

I finally arrived in Montreal to get some beers with some friends. At 4AM, I was quite done...

So here I am home and after one day of work, I cannot take off from my head the lyrics from Led Zeppelin's song that started just as I was entering my hometown, Dream on.

Dream on, dream on, dream on, dream until your dreams come true...

Thanks for reading me again this year and hopefully, I will be back entertaining you again next winter!

Damn high pressure ridge…

High pressure ridge are really hard to go through as a skibum.


These are the kind of days that you should be doing laundry, clean stuff, do grocery, go on the internet and check random stuff around. But when they last more than 24h, you just figure it is just about to change… Then you realize it is going to be one of those North American high ridge that is going to settle from Arizona to Alaska….

What does that mean: wait for new snow, ski north facing stuff, hang around and meet Jimmy again!


This year makes things really worst: crappy avy conditions. It does stop you from making big tour on high pressure systems, stop you from wanting to move around to a better place since there isn’t a better place to move to get better skiing….

Actually, since the last storm in Brighton, I’ve been celebrating my birthday dinner in the parking lot enjoying one of this such incredible spaghetti and tomato sauce during sunset, skiing the backcountry a little bit around the Wasatch and figuring we were tired of looking for a spot that didn’t have any rain crust and/or sun crust and/or wind crust…


Since Utah was supposed to be dry and that there was more than 7inches following a 12in storm in Wyoming, we decided to move to the TETONS.

God bless the TETONS… I always have the feelings that I don’t spend enough time in the TETONS... (for those who haven’t pick it up yet, TETONS directly translate to TITS in French, so I guest you can figure it’s funny to hear about the GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK!!)

So we moved on the 12th and had some really good turns: no any kind of crust!!! It really felt good to be turning around some good snow again….

Since we were pretty close from the last storm, we decided to check out Grand Targhee, with a 2 for 1 from www.skifreedeals.com. The resort was pretty tracked out, be there was still some good turns to put in there.

Luckily enough, we ran into Dan Hays, a guy we met 2 years ago paddling in the Northern States while whitewater kayaking!!! He invited us to stay at is place with is really cool roommates!!! We made Victor our homebase for our next days and we decided to stay around the Tetons more than expected!

Jarred, invited us to a day of sled skiing around a drainage near home. Even if it hadn’t snowed for some times, it was still pretty nice on the north facing faces and hooked some nice cornices.

Actually, it is the way it has been for the last day… ski the north facing stuff like and trying to make some good pictures…. For you that don’t understand, it means skiing into the shade and trying to take some picture that will sill have some light in it!

So we have been spending the last days, couch surfing at Dan’s place, skiing Teton Pass or around, cooking salad ( yes, we putted a vegetable in our diet!), burgers and tacos (yes, we sometimes eat different stuff than spaghetti and tomato sauce!!!) and hoping that there will going to call for some snow somewhere… but they don’t.

For all of you in Quebec that are now living in -40 degrees temperatures, pray for snow!!!!

Now gone skiing towards Montana!!!

Not a bad start!

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On the 4^th of January, we skied the backcountry in front ofAlta, named Cardiff. The sun was out and the weather was really nice.

The avy conditions right now are not pushing you into skiing the steep and deep, it pushes you more into mellow and treed terrain. One of the problem it that it looks sketchy pretty much everywhere around North America; BC, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington… it seems that it won’t be a great year for backcountry skiing.

The next day, we skied Snowbird Ski Resort, the ski conditions were improving really fast each run we were skiing, since a heavy storm was coming in.

Snowbird has a lot of advanced terrain with a lot of good skiers, even then, we found countless lines in the trees, mainly deserved by the Tram. It is for sure one of the best ski resorts in Utah for the terrain and the powder.

After all that day of snowing, the road to go back to Salt Lake City (where we usually sleep) was restricted to 4 X 4 or chains, which of course we don’t have…..

So we decided to sleep up in the mountains in our car, it kept snowing heavily throughout the night. As expected, we were woked up by the US Marshalls at 5h45 am, because they were gonna do some avalanche control. They ordered us to enter the closest building to be in a safe place. The closest building happened to be the luxurious hotel of the town, Rustler Lodge. They were forced to accept us for the time of the bombing which lasted a couple of hours meaning we got to appreciate the full all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet with even real maple syrup!!!

Don’t have to tell you that it was a pretty good day to be skiing at Alta with over 24inches in 24 hours. We even tought for some times that the road would remain closed like last year but it finally opened before the lifts. Even if the lifts opened later than usually, and that a lot of the snow was upside-down (heavier snow on top of lighter snow), it was another really good Alta-fix.

Since the Avy danger didn’t really mellow out, we decided to check out Brighton. The overall conditions were really good with the snow from the last storm. The blue sky shows up, so we pretty much skied all over the resort.

Even if the resort has really good slack-country, we stick our turns inbounds… A closed call happened about 100 feet from the resort boundary, when a boarder triggered a slab with a crown around 7 feet deep! He was lucky enough that is snowboard got stuck in the trees and that he didn’t go for the full 500 feet ride.

We were just about to leave the resort when another storm of 8+inches fell overnight. We had planned a day off, but were forced to ski…. Again.

We only enjoy the morning runs and than stopped around lunch.

We are still not decided if we are going to stay around here or move.

Here we go again!!!

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So it’s back. That time of the year when you gotta quit everything to go skiing.

Alexis’ knee has been repaired through surgery and he spent most of the summer doing physio. He also used his spare time to build his first skis that will probably be super nice to skis.

I did spend the summer paddling around Quebec, BC and the Northern States. But now, I’m back for a full winter of Snowchasing.

This winter is going to be different from last year since I won’t be skiing with Alexis for the whole winter because his knee is not strong enough to handle 8 days of skiing per week. I will be first joined by Amelie for the first three weeks, than I will meet some friends for around 10 days of skiing in BC, than I will meet my dad for a full 2 weeks in Japan and than…. I’ll see!

We quit Quebec for another drive towards the mountain. After debating about starting the journey in BC or Utah, we finally chose the last option. For this winter, we bought a nice Ford Escrotte 1997.

Hope Amelie will not ditch this one like two years ago in Colorado with my old Escrotte .

We set up a bed in the back to be able to cross fast but we had to stop a little bit past Toronto cause of the road conditions.

Besides this forced nap, it has been a fairly normal traverse: drive, stop for gas, change driver, sleep, drive-eat…

We spent the New Year’s Eve driving across Nebraska! Can’t be more exciting!!!

We spent our first day of skiing around Grizzly Gulch in the backcountry of Little Cottonwood Canyon. The snow wasn’t that deep, the conditions weren’t that great but it was really good to be back.

Today we got our first dump, 9 inches, we took advantage of this to ski Solitude, apart from the slow and forever breaking chair, the ski was nice and the sun was out! Honeycomb canyon was open, leaving us plenty of fresh powder.

We’ll see how things work out. If the snow doesn’t show up (we had 9 instead of the 12-14in forecasted) than will move towards some more powdery land!!!!