Expedition to the North Shore

Finally snow was falling from the sky in Jackson for more than 5mins. A windy storm had left almost 10inchs of snow in some areas. Last Tuesday we skied the resort and a couple favourite backcountry runs, some of the best snow we had seen in weeks. Still by overall Jackson standards nothing too amazing… But then again, we are totally spoiled.

We decided that with the next 2 days looking clear, this was the best opportunity we might get to go back to the North Shore.

A place we had visited about a month ago. Easily accessible but not so easy too, but not so easy to get home.

This time we planned on staying out there for the night snow camping. One of the main reasons for this, apart from the skiing was to test our self’s and our equipment. As we could potentially be doing similar sorts of things when we get to Alaska.

We got on the tram at about 11am Wednesday the 24^th of March. There were 3 of us. My self, Nick Hooper and Sam Winstone. With us we had all the gear necessary for over-nighting in snow country. Or did we?

All our gear was split up into 5 packs. 2 big hiking packs and 3 day packs. 5 packs and 3 people meant that 2 of the day packs had to be attached to the hiking packs, making them extremely heavy.

We got out the gates at the top of Jackson Hole resort and headed up towards Cody peak. About half way up we split of the track and headed down towards out camp site.

In very high sprits we headed down getting some nice turns on the way. It was a warm day, with clear skies. This worried us a little: Was the snow going to be worth all this effort? With the clear skies, how cold was it going to get?

The weather forecast was: overnight lows of around -10 to -15 degrees C increasing to 0 during the day Thursday with a storm rolling in the afternoon.

We arrived at the base of the North Shore, established a camp site, dumped our gear and got into a bit of skiing.

The process with skiing this terrain was not a hard as it sounds. Attach you skins to your skis, flick the leaver on your bindings to free the heal, and you were away. Skin up ski down. One run taking approximately 40mins.

We found the snow to be not as amazing as we had hoped. Good in some spots on certain aspects and really bad in others. The temperatures had just been a little bit too warm the day before.

We skied a couple runs then headed back to our gear to set up camp.

An hour or so past, things we starting to get dark and the temperature was starting to drop. Time to cook dinner to keep warm. During dinner of pasta with tomato sauce and sausage we were interrupted by a couple of guys that had been out in the wilderness for a couple days snow-shoeing. After a bit of a chat they decided to join us, and set up camp. The last thing we expected to have camping in the backcountry in March was neighbours.

After dinner we got out skins back on our skis and headed out for a final sun set ski. Perfect way to end a good day.

Twilight skiing

After the sun had gone to bed, we headed back to camp for a couple whiskey’s around the fire before getting in our sleeping bags and going to bed.

Lucky for me I slept very well. My sleeping bag was up to the test, along with the 3 layers I had on top 2 on the bottom socks and down booties. I was toasty. Nick and Sam however were not so lucky. The biggest problem they had was their sleeping bags. Just not warm enough. They got very little sleep.

The next morning we got out of our tent at about 8.30am. Cooked breakfast, (which was scrambled eggs with smoked salmon,) Boiled snow for water, said good bye to our snow shoeing friends and got ready for the day.

By the time we packed up our cam and set off the time was 11.45am. The weather was nice. Clear little bit of a breeze and quite warm. We skinned up towards No Name peak which was going to be our exit out of The North Shore.

We had been going for about an hour when all of a sudden we noticed the wind blowing snow off the top a near by cornice. At time same time we noticed some high thin cloud start to roll in. The temperature also rapidly dropped. With in half an hour we found our self’s in a full on snow storm.

Luckily we were still in the trees protected from the wind and snow. We needed visibility to get home the way we had planned. We had about another hour of skinning up hill through the trees before getting into an open face. We would be blind with no visibility. We decided to sit it out for 20mins and see if the weather lifted at all.

Our other option was to turn back. Head back to our camp site and push out back to Teton village through Granite Canyon by following the creak. We had been this way before but from where we were with these packs it could take up to 4 or 5 hours.

We had made our decision. Turn back and go out through Granite. It was going to be the safer option. Because even if we did find our way to the top of No Name peak, skiing down with no visibility and with these massive packs could be quite dangerous.

Then seconds before turned around and headed back to our camp site, the clouds lifter slightly. Giving us enough visibility to see where we needed to go. It was going to be shorter option. We were already tired and getting cold. We needed to push on.

So we continued on our way up towards No Name Peak.

Slogging through the bad weather, I tried to think of some happy thoughts. My mind drifted all over the place. From my past trips to WA, to thinking about being at home in Melbourne in my own bed. Anything to keep my mind off the 30kg (No idea how heavy it really was) pack and my burning legs.

Eventually we made it to the peak. The wind was howling and the visibility was poor. But at least we knew exactly where we were as we had been up here many times before. I felt slightly more comfortable. But I knew the battle was not over.

Skins came off, helmet and goggles on. Back into ski mode. We set off down towards No Name bowl. The snow was poor, soft powder with a firm crust on top that did not make turning easy.

We made it to the top of Pinedale the temperature rising and the wind dropping, slightly. The snow at the top of Pinedale was actually quite good for about 10 turns, but definitely the most un-enjoyable 10 turns I’ve ever had. This dam pack! If I was going to make it all the way back to the village without having a bad fall and twisting my knee, it was going to be a miracle.

The snow went from bad to worse. The lack of fresh snow high temperature over the past month had left the lower part of the Tetons almost un-skiable. Still we had to keep going. The time now was 4pm. The lift at the end of the traverse that would get us back to the village closed at 4.30pm. If we didn’t make it I was probably going to cry.

Skiing through the trees back into the Hobacks, the snow was getting thin, very thin! At one stage I had to ski over 100% dirt and rocks no snow at all for about 20m. Climb over fallen down trees and around big patches of grass. Finally we reached the resort. And a few turns down the Hobacks later I was on the trail back to the lift. What a fucking nightmare!

As I approached the lift I checked my watch. 4.35pm, my fears were then brought into reality when we saw that the lift was not turning. I collapsed in disbelief.

It really wasn’t the end of the world, but at that moment it did feel like it. It would only be another 10 – 15 min hike up hill to get up high enough so we could ski back to the Village.

While we were lying the in the snow , contemplating our next move our luck started to change. A ski patroller on a snowmobile taking his daughter for a ride cursed past.

We asked him for a lift and explained that had been hiking all day. He though us a rope and dragged us up the hill. Awesome!

Now back in the Village, we skied over to the bus stop and jumped on the next bus. I had just enough time to get a round of power aid’s before the bus left. They didn’t even quench our thirsts.

Finally home. Exhausted. It has been decided that snow camping in Alaska is probably not an option. While the camping part is ok the hiking and skinning around with all our gear is something that we probably wont be doing any time soon. At least with out a snowmobile.

Utah and the Freeskiing World Tour.

Still no snow in Jackson. Spring skiing was not enough to get me that excited.

One of the key weeks of my trip this year was going to be in Utah. Competing in the Freeskiing World Tour. But first I would need to qualify.

For some reason the mountains around Salt Lake City were getting a lot more snow than we were here in Jackson. Even though they were only 5 hours away. Something to do with the jet stream, or maybe people in SLC go to church more often. What ever it is, its just better right now. So it was time to get down there.

I drove down with my friend Meg, who was on the waiting list to compete in the event. We arrived in Park City, 40mins out of SLC on Sunday night. We stayed with some Aussie friends of mine that I met about 4 years ago. Henry and Tahnee. These guys had been doing season in Park City for a few years now and are always good fun.

We skied Snowbird the next day. The bird had received about a foot of new snow over the last couple days, and it was the best skiing we had had in weeks! Covering all key powder hot spots: Chamonix chutes to The Bookends then on to Silver Fox and then Finally on to West Baldly. All areas were in excellent shape.

After ticking these boxes it was time to get down to business. West Baldy and Silver Fox were both venues for the Freeskiing comp later in the week. So we used the good snow to Closely identify and inspect our lines for the comp. The Weather was warm and clear. The snow was getting heavy, the next morning this nice soft powder is sure to not be as inviting…

Sure enough after Mondays clear skies, the snow froze overnight. Horrible conditions to start with on West Baldy. But by about lunch time things softened up enough to ski it properly. We spent the day finalizing our lines and inspecting the venue as tomorrow (Wednesday) the Freeskiing comp will begin.

Qualifying venue - West Baldy

Tuesday afternoon Meg found out that she had a spot in the comp to compete. She would be skiing 2^nd out of the girls on Wednesday, and I would be skiing 42^nd out of the guys on Thursday. There were 12 girls and 60 guys competing both days during the qualifiers. 5 Girls and 20 guys from each day would progress to Day 1 of the Freeskiing World Tour.

This was Meg’s first Big Mountain competition, she has had plenty of experience competing in skiing but only racing. Ski racing all the way through high school and into Collage.

She was very nervous but totally capable of putting in a good run. Which she did. She skied really well, having a couple problems with fluidity and aggression. Which really just came down to the firm snow and the fact it was her first comp of this type. She ended up coming 8^th that day. She was a little disappointed but totally stoked that she got to be apart of the event.

Meg, in the bottom section of her run on West Baldy

My friend Alex Tarran, who we were staying in SLC with was also competing on the Wednesday. Alex is a ski patroller up at Snowbird, and has been doing that for about 4 years.

She also skied well, basically skied the same line as Meg, but went a little bigger of one of her airs. Alex ended up in 7^th place. Neither Alex or Meg progressed to the next round.

Thursday came around pretty quickly, and it was my turn. They started the comp at about noon. In the sun shine and softening snow. But 5 people before my run, the clouds rolled in. Just as forecasted. The wind picked up and flakes started falling.

After sitting at the top of the venue with the remaining 18 competitors for an hour and a half, the competitions was postponed until tomorrow.

Forecast for tomorrow – Cold temps, snow, low visibility and wind.

The next morning the weather bureau was bang on. Due to time constraints the final 18 competitors would have to ski there run regardless.

We had one final inspection before our run. The conditions were the worst that I could have possibly imagined. Rock hard chunks of ice on a rock hard base with 1inch of light powder on top. Flat light and a strong up hill wind. UGLY!

I was definitely spooked, due to the conditions. Having to ski an aggressive run, hit airs and land on rock hard snow is not my idea of fun skiing.

I pushed out of the gate put in a few turns at before my first air into a chute. I cant really remember what happened after that. I know I hit all my airs bar 1. I skied pretty well under the circumstances, but it definitely was not an enjoyable experience.

Unfortunately due to an unlucky draw the standard of skiers skiing that day meant that the cut off point was extremely high. Half the field were locals, including skiers such as Cody Barnhill and Whiley Miller.

I scored a 27.5 a score that probably would have got me through on the other 2 days, but today it wasn’t going to be enough. The cut off was 8 I came 10^th The guy in 8^th scoring 29.5ish. Definitely unlucky, but not much I can do about it.

My self, and the Dujardin brothers, Ed and Will

The next two days we spent watching the World Tour event. Under perfect conditions. The clouds had lifter and the wind had stopped. Perfect for watching the event. The standard of skiing was amazing! Such an awesome event to watch. I really don’t understand why it doesn’t get more media coverage.

For more info on the event go to www.freeskiingworldtour.com

Here are some shots I took from the event…

Day 1 Venue - Silver Fox

Chopo Diaz Double staged 360

Ben Wheeler airing under the red box

The crowd for the Final on North Baldy

Chopo Diaz 360 at the bottom of North Baldy

Blowing up at the bottom

Lars Chickering-Ayers big double at the bottom of North Baldy - Lars ended up winning the event

Ben Wheeler bottom double stager at the bottom of North Baldy - Ben ended up 10th over all

I had an awesome week down in Utah. Definitely regret not doing more comps this year. I had all these grand plans to do other things, but the weather just didn’t allow.

Mid Session entertainment provided by the speed flyers

Positive thinking – Looking to the future

Seeing as we are not skiing much these days, we have been spending quite a bit of time preparing our itinerates of the next month or so. Looking forward to hopefully some for more favorable conditions.

The plan as it stands:

Depart Jackson Hole Early April and drive back to Vancouver and or Whistler where Sam, Nick and my self will sped a couple nights. Drive further north to the coastal town of Prince Rupert on the West coast of British Colombia. Catch a car ferry Haines in Alaska. Where we will spend about 3 weeks. Either ski touring, Skiing with snowmobiles and at times possibly heliskiing.

After this time I will be leaving the other boys by catching a ferry to Juneau Alaska. Then jumping on a plane and flying to Maui Hawaii. Ill then be meeting up with Joel Ryan, Philip Chalko and Al Mcleod. We have rented a little shack near the beach on the North Shore, we will be spending a month, windsurfing, kite surfing and surfing.

Finally at the end of May Ill be jumping on a plane back to Melbourne.

As always my plans may change, and they most likely will…

Spring has unfortunately sprung

Back in Jackson for almost a week now. We have seen positive forecasts come and go. Leaving 2inch’s total for the week.

The weather for the last 3 weeks has been warm and sunny, with freezing temperatures at night. The snow is rock hard in the morning and by about 11am things start to soften up enough to have some enjoyable skiing. By 3pm your skiing in a slurpee. The melt has taken full force and we are watching the winter just wash away. Every day there is more and more dirt appearing on the lower mountain. A miracle is needed. Its happened before, and it will happen again. But will it be this season?

Platinum ski bumming in Whistler

We arrived into Whistler Creak Side at about 6pm. We had arrange to stay at one of Andrew’s mates places, but we were warned, “It is really small..”

He wasn’t wrong. The living / dining / kitchen was about 5m x 5m. Already 3 people living in this tiny place, we decided to move on in find of some other form of accommodation.

So the Olympics are over the town is apparently empty. Even though it seems to be teeming with tourists. Can’t imagine the carnage during the games when it was apparently busy… We made our way up to Whistler Village, where all the action was suppose to be happening. The 4 of us split up and started doing the rounds getting prices for hotel rooms.

In the end we somehow decided that the Hilton was the best option. Pretty good value for $260 a night between 4 people. Also considering that a week earlier the same room was going for over $600 a night. So it was a deal we couldn’t pass up.

1^st day in Whistler: Lining up for a day pass I was wondering what to expect when we got to the upper mountain. It was really warm in the village, and we had been told by some of the locals that the snow was not bad, quite fun for a bit of jibbing and general cruising around. So I had my park skis with me, expecting nothing more than springie day skiing.

$97 later I was on the gondola, shaking my head… Once we got to the upper mountain and onto one of the top lifts we were greeted with cold temperatures, a fresh few inches of snow and perfect visibility. Confused on why we were told that the conditions were different to what we were seeing. We quickly discovered what was going on when our guide, one of Andrews mates takes us on down this ridge line, away from all the fresh open slopes into the trees and dropping so much elevation that the snow turns to a mix of crud and slush. We get on the lift confused once again, looking around towards the upper mountain and seeing fresh snow, steep faces, chutes and cliffs. Why had we just skied that ridge line? Why did we go so low?

We started pointing out little areas to our guide, “we should ski over there, and keep high.”These comments were followed by this remark. “You guys actually ski that stuff...? Hmm…” At this point we realized that at Whistler we were dealing with a totally different bread of skier than we were a custom too. Even though in Jackson there are about a 10^th the amount of people skiing than on a normal day in Whistler, all the area that we could se in front of us would have been totally chewed up and tracked out by now.

We took advantage of this, I up graded my skis and spent the rest of the day ripping around both Whistler and Blackcomb, skiing almost all of the upper mountains.

A great day! This was cause for celebration. The beer was flowing and night life in Whistler did not disappoint. Partying into the early hours of the morning.

The next morning we were not feeling quite so sharp. But ready for a big day. Gearing our self’s up for some hikes and some good skiing. We definitely got a couple of strange looks on the way to the gondola, fully equipped with big mountain skis, back-packs and avalanche gear.

We headed up Whistler mountain in search of an area we had seen the day before called Flute Bowl. What we were told was a 40min hike. We found this hard to believe from our vantage point, looked more like 25mins…

Once at the bottom of the hike, we were not greeted with the normal ‘Boot pack’ that we normally saw in Jackson. Instead a nice groomed trail that never got too steep and winded its way to the top of the bowl. We could now see why it was going to take 40mins… Traveling about twice as many steps as necessary.

We got to the top, hangover still very present. Took a bit of a breather before heading down.Definitely the best snow we experienced on the trip. So well worth it.

That night we were pretty tired, but still had the energy to find our self’s a table at the Sushi Village, right in the centre of Whistler village. Not a cheep meal, but definitely the best food I’ve eaten this year!

The next morning we got up, made use of the Hilton’s pool and spa one last time before packing up and heading back down to Vancouver. Quite an amazing drive, from the highway you could see massive mountains and glaciers.

Once back in Vancouver we went back to our friend Joe’s places, got some drinks and prepared our self’s for a night on the town. Fun night was had. A few key differences between going out in Van vs Melbourne: The ratio of girls to guys – 1:5, The bars close at 3am and there are also an amazing amount of crazy people cursing around town talking to them self’s, yelling for no reason, or asking for money.

Saturday morning we got up with sore heads, packed the car and got back on the road. We got stuck crossing the boarder back into the US for about an hour which from what we have herd isn’t too bad. But still a pain in the ass. We drove East from Seattle this time and opted to go home through Montana rather than Oregon because the drive was so boring. We made it to Spokane which is on the East side of Washington, we found a cheep hotel room and settled in for the night.. The next day back on the road at about 9am. 10 hours later we were back in Jackson.

Exit Jackson – Enter Vancouver

About a week or so ago, we were all sitting around contemplating our next move. The forecast for Jackson was not looking that exciting. We hadn’t seen any significant snow in over a week, a new adventure was on the needed to keep things interesting.

I madly surfed the web, in search of the latest 7 day forecasts for all over the Western side of North America. These were the options –

Jackson: No snow temperatures above 0 degrees C = get out of town…

Interior British Columba: No snow cool temperatures, hadn’t seen snow in over a month = No point…

Tahoe: Massive storm on the way up to 3 ft possible Temperatures above 0 degrees during the day = Risk of rain. I’m not skiing in the rain!

Utah: Snow on the way also too warm possible rain.

Whistler: Little bit of snow on the way temperatures cool + get to visit Vancouver = Best option!

So the decision was made, BC bound. My self, Andrew, his brother Don and Watkin were going to be making the journey.

The 4 of us got an early start on the driving, leaving Jackson at 6am. A 1600km drive ahead of us. Traveling through, Idaho, Oregon, Washington state and finally crossing the boarder into British Columba.

There were not too many highlight on the trip up… Long and boring drive. We expected to see some cool things but it was a bit of a let down. 16 hours in total we drove for that day, finally arriving at Don’s friend Joe’s house, just outside of Vancouver. Absolute relief on our arrival, all of us feeling like we have just traveled around the world.

The next day we got up, packed up our things and let Joe’s place headed for Whistler. Not before checking out the city of Vancouver.

It was 2 days since the Winter Olympics had finished. Downtown Vancouver looked like a war zone. Teams of cleaners, construction workers and other ‘tare down’ type workers were going for it. Trying to put the city back together. I was pretty happy not to have been there during the games, it would have be absolute mayhem!