Since moving to Victoria a few months ago, I've been jonesing for some snow. A group of four friends and I went to Nelson over New Year's to do some ski touring, and to cure my snowless blues. The avy risk was fairly high, with the CAC reporting poor confidence in their forecast, but with several decades of backcountry skiing between the group, as well as an avy instructor amongst us, we felt fairly comfortable skiing conservative tree lines.
On the first backcountry day, I stepped into my bindings at the Kootenay Pass trailhead and the bindings wouldn't engage properly. Strange, I thought. Upon closer inspection, I realized that one of the toe pins on my Onyx bindings was sheared off. Oh crap was the only thing I could think of: My friends are going to ski deep powder snow and I'm going to be stuck in the warming hut all day. Another skier walked over with his Onyx-mounted skis, and I asked him if he had ever seen this before. "No." he replied, "But can you tele?" It turns out that Jan, who coincidentally works across campus at UVic (where I also work), had an entire extra tele setup with fat powder skis, NTN bindings, skins, and wait for it – boots that fit! I gave up tele last year for the easier-on-the-quads sport of AT skiing. I took him up on his offer and had a great day out skiing Ripple Pass.
The avy conditions were pretty spotty, with plenty of whumfing and significant propagation but we didn't trigger anything on the descent(s). Testing on the way up produced a small slab. Back in town, and on New Year's Eve, Cam from G3, who (if I'm not mistaken) designed the Onyx binding, loaned me a spare one so I could ski the rest of our trip on my own skis (what customer service!). On day 2 we skied Evening Ridge near Whitewater and, again, had superb snow and great descents. It was a great trip and I can't wait to ski in the Kootenays again.
