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    • Condtion report and soap box entry number two!
    Ascent Magazine

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    Here’s your chance to tell everyone about everything and anything to do with backcountry skiing. Follow the simple steps to register and WHAMMY, you’re in. If you are pulling your hair out with frustration, have a look at the help forums for answers or take a pause and drop us an email at: info (at) backcountryskiingcanada.com. We’ll do our best to help out as soon as we can (but all bets are off on a powder day, obviously).  

    Condtion report and soap box entry number two!

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    • Chasing snowflakes
      2014-02-18 20:19:49

      Condtion report and soap box entry number two!

      The drought is finally over! After a slow and seriously dry start to the season things have finally turned around and conditions are deep albeit very touchy when it comes to the stability. The resorts have been skiing splendidly this week  and the crowds were minimal generally speaking. Here's a visual condition report from Sunshine Village.

      Screen grab shot with the MUVI HD

      Screen grab shot with the MUVI HD


      Skiing conditions have certainly improved in the last few days, with 85 cms so far and another 40 on it's way it's safe to say mother nature has hit the reset button but our uncrowded slopes would soon be overrun by holiday skiers visiting for the Family day long weekend.  Saturday we headed off for whiter pastures and opted for a tour on the Icefields parkway on highway 93N located just north of Lake Louise. The avalanche bulletin was reading  as HIGH across all elevations for the forecast region, we would have to stick to simple terrain during our outing, bummer!  As we passed the Lake Louise ski area there was a 5 kilometer line of cars lined up for the resort ( seriously )with many more vehicles to follow suite shortly and just like that we felt much better about our decision. 

      Kicking our way across the flats11

      Kicking our way across the flats

      With the new snow we wanted to have a look at what the snowpack was doing with this new load and warmer temperatures.  We found that the storm snow wasn't playing nice with the two surface hoar layers from January. Then we looked at what seems to the be the only constant in continental snowpacks. Some dirty, square , huge depth hoar.

      Depth Hoar.JPG
      Kevin breaks trail

      Kevin breaks trail

      Pit dos.JPG
      Zach had some other issues. Nothing duct tape , a shoelace and some zip ties won't fix.

      Zach had some other issues. Nothing duct tape , a shoelace and some zip ties won't fix.

      After a quick lunch break we chatted about the conditions and what we should be skiing with the conditions we had, It was quite obvious that anything steep and open was out of the question. We had some deep snow below us with plenty of little pillows , little cliffs and well glades trees but most of all we were comfortable with our choice of terrain.  3...2...1..drop.

      Tree skiing here is as good as it gets in the Rockies

      Tree skiing here is as good as it gets in the Rockies

      Tasty

      Tasty

      Enter white room.

      Enter white room.

      Always good to look back up at your mountain squiggles 

      Always good to look back up at your mountain squiggles 

      Good times were had with good people and although this is considered to be a pretty popular area it seems people only chose to ski the classic way own, too bad for them! If you haven't yet, for the love of everything holy get out there! After all who knows, it may be another two months after this storm leaves us before we get snow again. 


    • Shredmasterplus
      2014-02-19 00:27:37

      O Yea, down town pow town

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