Good Luck Charms

I’ve only known Martin for about 2 winters now and interestingly enough we are greeted with awesome ski conditions every time he visits us from Nelson. We get powder in full season or great spring skiing like this past week-end. Jeff and I being on the Wild Rose cleanse for 8 days now, I had to do a little food planning for the 2 days we were going to be out in the backcountry at the Asulkan Hut. So I welcomed him with some healthy dinner on Friday and really started  getting excited about our week-end plans.

Jeff and I were easily convinced to switch to our very light gear and because of some boot malfunctions, Martin ended up taking Jeff’s F1 Scarpa and his Dynafit Mustagh set-up. Quite a change for someone who’s newly converted from snowboarding to skiing.

Looking at the cooler weather forecast for early Saturday morning , we decided on a later start and made it quite efficiently into the Asulkan Hut. To our surprise, only 2 more spots were taken for the week-end which made for great hut-life. We greeted the 2 young brave snowboarders from Edmonton, obviously a lot more fatigued than us, before heading out to venture up towards Youngs Peak. The visibility was not great but the terrain is pretty easy to manage.

There were about 10 to 15cms of fresh snow on top of a hard crust which made for some good skiing coming down from the summit of Youngs Peak. Plus with the skinny skis, we were guaranteed to get knee deep powder turns!  Martin’s first tour up the Asulkan valley and we skied the classic 7 steps of paradise.

We settled in for a nice comfort food dinner and convinced our new friends to play a few games of Yahtzee. We enjoyed a good night of sleep on new mattresses and with the new propane stove put in the hut this past January, how could we not feel refreshed and recovered the following morning.

The weather had stormed a bit late Saturday but had cleared out before dark. Unfortunately, we woke up to a “mur blanc” and so we took our time to enjoy breakfast and refresh some quick self-rescue techniques. Having inspired Justin and Jason, they headed off to follow our tracks from yesterday towards Youngs Peak while we started our climb up the glacier towards Sapphire Col.

As we roped up and climbed wisely on the crevassed terrain, we were glad to have clouds protecting us from the hot sun rays peaking out from time to time. We quickly got to Sapphire Col and proceeded up up Castor peak for the beginning of the Jupiter Traverse. Martin got to try out crampons for his first time and here we were roping up again after Castor Peak, the first of 3.

Jeff nicely gave me the lead, which I was quite excited about and we continued on. With a mix of sun, cloud and wind, we had perfect conditions for this traverse. We reached Polux, the second peak with Leda as the last one before descending the Thorington route. Martin snapped a few pictures of his first true ski mountaineering experience, no chance of wiping off his permanent grin.

We got to our to the top of the Thorington line,  with Jeff skiing down first. A little bit of slough came down but he always manages to make it look good. Going second, I found myself challenged with the skiing on my little sticks and my F1 Scarpa Carbons. I experienced some heavy slough also before making a hard left to avoid an obvious bergschrund. I had to take a few brakes from the legs burning after this long descent. Martin skied down like he was on his regular gear and couldn’t get over this whole day so far.

Back to the hut for a late afternoon lunch, we packed up and started our way down with some super fun corn snow! Jeff took a wicked tumble after hitting some soft snow. I have to say that I’ve never seen him taken such a good wipe out on skis before. We all had a good laugh after I mimicked him a little lower down the slope. We carefully and safely exited from the Mouse Trap, looking up the Ravens from time to time, watching for any avalanche activity which is frequent there this time of year.

The snow was so fast allowing us to skate ski the whole way, we made it down to the truck in a record time. We were thrilled and happy to have had such a great week-end!

Thanks Martin for your good luck charm and Jeff for being the patient teacher that you are!

Allez-up!