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    • Spring guidebook lines
    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).  

    Spring guidebook lines

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    • skiitsbetter
      2015-06-03 12:19:17

      Spring guidebook lines

      The life of the weekend warrior was a litle tough this spring, with consistent blue-bird weather not appearing until later.

      Chick-a-boom traverse. A beautiful ski up the Chickadee valley, the south facing options at the end of the valley present great corn descents on their own right, but we continued. The steepness on the north side was short lived and slog continued along the top of the cliffbands above Boom Lake before climbing up to the Boom Mt. col for a forgetable descent through breakable suncrust!

      Popes col is a great ski and one that I wish to return to with better views and snow depth so that I can lap both lobes of the glacier. Visibility was in and mostly out, so we moved towards landmarks as they appeared through the fog. The climb through the larches to regain Narao shoulder was one of the most pleasant parts of the day before an isothermal bash back to the road.

      Pumpkin traverse is a classic with some suprisingly steep slopes to kick it off, both ascending and descending. A little disheartening to center punch a steep and exposed south facing slope only to find miles of flat terrain as the reward.

      The "cross country" skiing guidebook warned of a long and hard day for the Opabin-Wenkchemna circuit. A hard pace was set up to Lake O'hara and onto the Opabin glacier. After a short descent, we were center punching up to Wenkchemna pass, wondering if the traverse would be more fun in the opposite direction (there would be longer, lower angle approaches to the cols though). Nobody had much interest of heading over Wastache pass, which was for the better as we all suffered skating out Moraine lake road.

      I have really underappreaciated the Cirque Peak- Observation Peak area for ski mountaineering. From the road and earlier in the season, they appear windblasted, but both shelter small glaciers on their northern aspects. Later in the spring, corn can be skied on all aspects!


    • Chasing snowflakes
      2015-06-03 15:54:28

      Nice work! The weekend warrior life can be a difficult one but on the flip side the stoke is often super high all the time.  
    • skiitsbetter
      2015-06-05 16:56:18

      I wouldn't say the stoke is high all the time, it can be tough to watch optimal conditions slip away while trapped in the office, but when you get it good, you appreciated it much more!

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