Peter and I headed west to Blair's place on Friday night. Got up early and found Nicholas (who we met via Teton Gravity) We were all new to the pass, so with topo GPS in hand we decided to follow another group! Lots of choices and we figured some local beta would be a good idea. We chatted at the top of the climb with the other group. Turns out I was semi-famous as the one guy had read this blog before and seen my posts on splitboardlife.com

We decided to keep climbing and they dropped in. At the top of the ridge another group caught up to us. Dave, Rich and Connie - two splitboarders and a snowboarder who happened to be skiing that day, along with their amazing dog. They offered to show us around some more and took us down the opposite side of the ridge to what we'd planned. Wind hammered for 2 turns, epic the rest of the way down. Back up the other side of the valley and down again, followed by a long slog out. Great day. Was very happy to have the local knowledge that Dave brought. Having someone break trail was nice too.

Day 2 brought some new snow overnight. We had implemented the 30 cm rule - more than that and we'd get the free stuff at Red or White. Wound up with about 15cm, so we headed back up to the pass. Met up with Dave and the gang again. We followed them for a while, but they wanted to bag another run that day and their pace was too much for Blair and Peter. We said our goodbyes and took a more comfortable pace up the mountain. After scouting the topo gps map for a bit we decided to drop into a promising looking area. Damn! Between the new snow and the features, it was so good that we made 3 more laps in the same area. Had a blast with all cliffs and features.

A couple of great days. Only 6,000 vertical, but I think Blair and Peter have the motivation to get the legs and lungs into better shape for future trips.

We hit up Schweitzer on Monday. They'd gotten 16 inches in the past 48 hours so conditions were great. They were recently ranked 3rd for best tree riding in North America. I enjoyed them. Terrain is a bit benchy, but still great fun. What resort isn't fun on a powder day though?

I'm off to enjoy a full 3 days of riding. Current plan has Peter and I heading west to ride with Blair. There's a snow drought pretty much everywhere, so we'll be hitting up the Salmo/Creston (aka Kootenay) pass.

I just received my new Garmin 60Cx (bringing my GPS quantity to 4! Don't ask. 3 of them are Garmin - maybe I should buy some stock?) I picked up the topo map CD's as well, so now I have full topo information for all of Canada!



Hopefully the drought ends and we can get some fresh stuff for "free" at Red or White.

Found this contest the other day. Who doesn't want a couple days of free cat boarding?

Damn, might have just found a reason to buy GPS #5.... I've been wanting to take Beacon into the backcountry with me, but she's still earning her off leash trust. Seems Garmin has a solution for me?

My plans to take the entire winter off got derailed by a staffing "issue", but I've decided to take Mondays off for the rest of the winter. The plan is travel and ride a bit more.

Wound up not riding today, due to lack of new snow, extreme cold (-20 to -30C), and a lack of touring partner(s). I did get two days in though. On Sunday, I rode with an old friend (Tyler) at Whitewater. Tyler hasn't ridden much in the last couple years, but was still managing to throw down 3's by the end of the day. We got lucky and found about 6 inches of fresh and very blue skies. Was a bit on the cold and windy side, but a great day in the mountains. Even better when shared with an old friend. Whitewater has so many touring options available. Seemed like 50% of the people I saw up there had backcountry gear. It was cold, the fresh snow was great, but not epic, so I didn't take the big camera out. My point and shoot died after I took a couple scenics, so I didn't get any riding pics.

On Saturday, I paid $120 to get humbled. $60 for entry into the "crazy" course at the Randondee race, and another $60 for a "lift ticket" to the kind RCR folks who own Fernie.

Almost 5,000 vertical feet. 3 uphill sections and maybe one boot pack. They were expecting winning time in the 1:30 to 1:40 range. Greg Hill was rumored to be coming, but didn't show. In reading his blog, it seems that he's taking a winter off from competing to spend more time with the family. Anyway, they quoted up to 3 to 3.5 hours to finish. Since that's a skier quote, I figured I'd be stoked with a sub 3 hour finish (it takes much longer to convert a splitboard back and forth between up and down hill modes)

The first sign that I was in trouble was the one pieces. People wearing the same stuff I use as a base layer as an outer layer. The mini skis. The people sprint skinning up the hill to warm up. It was just barely light at 10 after 8 when the race started. I watched the pack fly out of the gate and promptly found myself in second last place. No worry, I'm sure they'll slow down and settle into a decent pace. Nope, the entire lot of them just pulled away. 1 hour in, I looked at my watch and saw that I'd climbed 1,900 feet. A great pace for me. The first bit was sorta flat, so if it'd been a nice consistent pitch, I'm sure it would have been 2,000 feet. Too bad the group was climbing at 2,500 to 3,000 feet an hour.

I took a tumble skiing downhill during one of the uphill sections (yes, you read that right - "rondo" courses seem to have lots of up and down - ok for skiers, not so much for snowboarders). Turns out the downhill sections also had some uphill. The course was poorly flagged - two downhill sections shared a run and some people completely missed the next uphill and skied to the finish line. Ooops. I made the same mistake, but stopped when I realized I was off course. Skinned back up and then had to skin across a flat traverse, that I *might* have had enough speed to snowboard "down" if I'd known where to go.

The second uphill was fairly steep for a section. They'd laid down skin track through an icy mogul run. I couldn't hold an edge and after taking a "death slide", unbuckled and boot packed my way up. Not one to quit, I made my way up to the top, rode down to the correct next uphill section which was the designated boot pack section. The race organizers had laid in a boot pack so that the leader wouldn't have to break trail. Great idea. Keeping the run closed until all competitors where through would have been a great idea too. They didn't. I arrived to find the boot pack obliterated by paying customers. Kick, kick, kick, step, repeat. I finally crossed the finish line 3:55 after I started. 2nd in the non-existant "splitboard" category and dead last amongst those who finished. I think one or two people quit, the others screwed up due to the flagging on the descent and DQ'd themselves.

With an existing boot pack to climb and not missing the traverse, and being able to skate on traverses rather than skin, I think I could have been in the low 3 hour range. Not sure if I had enough steam to get sub 3 hours like I'd wanted. Very humbling. I'm in probably 80 or 90% of the cardio shape I was in the summer when I was training for the marathons. (I'm still running, but only 6 to 10 miles per week). I'm physically stronger now than I was then for sure. I've been focusing on lower body and core strength for months now. Much like people who run full marathons in just over a couple hours, I'm starting to think that the "rondo" crowd is full of "genetically gifted" folks. Either that or I'm genetically deficient. Anyway, that's probably the end of my "rondo" career. I think I'll stick to climbing up mountains to slay powder.

They say you should thank the friends who got you into this sport. On Sunday, I chose to thank Kristjan and Connor by (hopefully) getting them into the split part of snowboarding. With thanks to Peter for the board and Adam for the poles, I took them each up Haig ridge at Castle. The weather cooperated with nice temps, mostly blue skies and minimal wind. It'd been a few days since snow had fallen, but there was some great snow to be had from this short 30 minute skin up.

It's always nice to ride with old friends. I elected to stay behind the lens and hopefully provide some motivation for them to join the ranks of splitboarders.

We'd heard whispers about Waterton being a great backcountry place. It's a bit more than an hour to the town site, probably 90 minutes door to parking lot of Cameron Lake. The parking lot being significantly removed from the goods. For some unknown reason, they gate the road, stop the snow plow and make people skin/snowshoe about 30-40 minutes. Each way. Lots of energy and daylight lost just getting to the trail head. There was only about 10 cars in the parking lot. Almost all of them had brought x-country skiers or recreation hikers.

The extra long traverse was worth it though. There's lots of options, some terrific variety of trees and a burn zone that's supposed to be located just outside the park boundary on the BC side. We didn't have time to explore it all, but we'll definitely be back soon.

It was a long day, not much vertical, but we got some epic photos. I'm loving the camera more and more. I need to get a smaller pack and leave the big lens at home. The 70-300 seems to be just too much lens 99.9% of the time. Took about 350 shots. Here's the best 5% or so.

I registered for my first Randonnee race - I'm going to get my ass handed to me as I'm a splitboarder and while I'm in great shape, I'm not in the world class shape of everyone else. Greg Hill is rumoured to be coming...

3 uphill sections (ie. 3 times to assemble-disassemble) along with about 4,200 feet of uphill. I'm hoping to be sub 3 hours.

I'm booked for a 3 day trip to Bella Coola Heli Sports Adam and I leave a month from today!

Found a great video with splitboard action here Snow looks a bit soft, but the editing and riding is top notch.

Lots of people dieing this winter in western Canada (10 so far). Pics from the inbounds slide at Big White are here Hits home as I've ridden that terrain and chair. Its the first inbound avalance death in Canada in 20+ years (or so said the guy on the radio)

Here's a close call in the Fernie area by a fellow splitboarder.

Like Todd (who was caught in the slide at Fernie) says "Play safe out there, but keep playing"

Saturday saw over a foot of fresh, so there was good turns to be had, when you could see where you were going! The wind was causing whiteouts up top. Found out that someone had ravaged the secret trees over the off season. They still give up the goods, but I fear more and more people will be tracking them out. I rode with Adam and "half-day" Dave. Enjoyed some great turns all day long.

Sunday was leftover day. Secret trees gave it up, until the blue chair broke and the red chair was closed. Spent some time lapping the flatter trees on Haig. That was getting chopped up pretty good, so Peter and I grabbed the splitties and headed up the ridge. Nailed an epic run through the trees. Let loose a smallish slab in a gully that was pretty wind loaded. Stumbled across some fellow slackcountry riders who were hiking a booter in the trees. Made a mental note of the location and will be back in the future with the big camera. Rode down to the cross country ski trail and made the short walk/skate back to the base. Great weekend.

We didn't research a whole bunch on Chatter before booking. It was on my short list as it seems to have a good rep online, it's lodge was right in it's tenure (no travel time lost daily). It had a bit of a feature in last year's WM movie, so next thing you know, Dave is telling me they'd booked. I jumped at the chance of knowing 1/3 of the cat before arriving. The lodge is remote and requires a heli transfer from the Golden airport. 25 minutes at 100 knots in a 407 or 212 and you're there. On shitty weather days it's a 90 km drive. From the highway. On sled, snowcat and maybe dog sled? We were lucky and got the bird both ways.

They built the lodge themselves and you can tell. It's "rustic". It seems to leak, the walls were thin, but it didn't fall down when we were there, so it served it's purpose. Food was amazing for a cat operation, but still was a far cry from "heli-belly".

First day is always about feeling out the customers. There was a couple weak links to be found and it took one run. Chatter didn't juggle the cat contents at all and we didn't push for it. We'd inquired about heli upgrade and were told we should have pre-arranged it. $1700 extra on top of the cat we'd already paid for. 17,000 vertical, then the industry standard $35-40 per 1,000 after. Ouch. Pre-arrange? WTF? That's not how I'd sell it... blue bird day comes, you get the guests to ante up and here comes the bird.

A great trip overall. No real accumulation of fresh snow in the time we were there, but they'd been closed over Christmas and we were the first group in. Some crazy alpine roads they've got built there, going way up to almost 10,000 feet. Terrain that would be far better suited by heli access. But, the stuff up there was quite flat. A couple punters in the cat who couldn't ski worth a crap. A snowboarder with a base graphic that proclaimed "Powder sucks") As usual the goods were in the trees, but the weakest links can't ski trees so you don't see them very often. Was super stoked to find a burnt forest in the tenure and really happy to cross that off the list of goals. The vertical was a bit soft at about 45,000 over 4 days. We didn't start as early as we could have and the morning commute to spread out 3 cats was a bit long.

Chatter had a pro photographer on staff. Turns out it's his first real season at a cat/heli operation. And it's his first shift in. And his first day is with us. And it's mostly bluebird. And he's a snowboarder. And he's selling dvd's of all the images from the day for $45 (which is so cheap, it's almost free). Needless to say, we were super stoked that Alain was there. I took my D40x and got some great shots. Heck even got some really good ones with the Canon point and shoot, but the truly epic shots you see here are all from Alain. The toe side pic isn't perfect. Could have been bluer, could have had a longer and steeper run-in for a larger spray, but it's way better than any other toe side shot I have. That shot alone was worth the trip for me. Merci Alain!

Anyhow, that's Chatter. We're still debating going back next winter. They're pretty much sold out for this season and this year's groups get first dibs on next season. I'm still torn, I like variety. Speaking of which, I talked Adam into another trip and we just faxed away the reservation forms for Bella Coola!

Back from Chatter and was stoked to find out they have an old burn zone from the 60's in their tenure. As luck would have it, the area was a bit cliffy too....

Crossing the burnt forest off the list of goals


Full trip report coming soon!