Snow is Cold

Today whilst we were putting the ski racks away after work (oh how I’ll miss doing that) they were blowing snow off the peak with explosives! It was quite cool to watch, there were these guys hovering in a helicopter then they detonated a series of bombs in a line across the mountain, causing a load of small avalanches. After they’d finished blowing up the first lot, a guy stood on top of a huge windlip and blew off a chunk of snow underneath him, nutter.

Anyway, thought I’d share that :)

Well the snow has continued to fall here although it’s actually gotten a bit warmer the past couple days so it’s only been falling higher up (potentially ominous although the forecast predicts more snow over the weekend). Monday and Tuesday were absolutely amazing powder days, on Monday I went to Whistler and rode Whistler bowl off the ridge line through some trees which was beautiful, then we went to West bowl and got stuck above a cliff band because the visibility was really bad, then managed to skirt round and pick a line through some big rocks :) after that we were too late to catch the last peak chair so we hiked to the very far side of Franz’s meadow and rode through a clearing in the trees ending up by the bridge on highway 86.
Tuesday we hit Blackcomb and managed to get a bunch of fresh lines because the high winds (40mph at the top) and bad visibility must have put most people off. The glacier was in the best condition it’s been in all season, although on the first run I managed to stay too far left and again ended up above some cliffs :) had to hike back up a little way that time which was a little scary because I could feel the snow was only about 10cms thick and there was sheet ice underneath. Could have been problematic if it had broken away especially as we’d noticed a sign at the top which said avalanche hazard :o
The first run down was so good we went back and did the same again! That was even better because we headed over to the far side where no-one had been and hammered it down over these powder rollers and slashing out huuuuge turns. The snow on that run is probably the best I’ve had, although the fact you couldn’t see anything means that the hiking run was probably just better.
In the afternoon we went to do spanky’s ladder because we thought no-one would have been there yet either. As we got to the top ski patrol arrived and said they were closing the high alpine off but we could still go down if we were quick. We set off towards sapphire bowl where there was a rope across the entrance saying “entrance to sapphire closed – extremely icy”, or something like that, but we decided to go there anyway because we’d done it before and thought it would be more dangerous to try and locate the other entrance. A ski patrol guy came down after us though and said, “didn’t you see the sign?” but we told him we’d already done that run so he said, “well, as long as you know what you’re getting yourselves into”. I was kind of worried though because along with me & Tim there were Yuki and another guy Masa who I wasn’t sure would enjoy it too much. In fact if I had been leading then I would have probably made everyone walk back out, but the ski patroller said he would sweep after us and it was probably better to go down than try and get back up and go a different way.
Anyway, me & Tim had negotiated the entrance ok, and I actually believed it was in better condition than the previous time we’d been down there, when I heard an exclamation from above and turned round to see Masa sliding headfirst backwards down this ice track which was the traverse in (it’s about 1.5m wide and with a maybe 10 degree camber). There was no way he was going to stop and I knew that on the corner of the entrance there was a cliff maybe 20 feet high and plenty of steep rocks off to the side if you slip down. Fortunately I’d stopped just before the corner and was well anchored to the run, so as he came I watched his speed (because I knew that if he was going too fast he could knock us both off) and as he came past me I grabbed him under the shoulder. Masa spun round and his edge stuck and he stopped right at the edge of the traverse…
The ski patrol guy was less than impressed, I’m guessing because he shouted “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??! How the hell do you get around like that?!?” when Masa slipped, but he put a brave face on it once we were safely into the bowl and finished with, “Have fun guys”, lol. I was pretty shit up though cuz I could envisage Masa having been in some trouble if I hadn’t been able to stop him. Anyway, we all got down safe enough but I think after that Masa was done for the day! I actually hugged him at the bottom and said, “shit man, you scared me”. We felt obliged to go for a beer afterwards.

On Wednesday the snow was nowhere near as good as the previous two days because even though it had snowed 16cms overnight it had gotten warm in the morning so the snow was extremely wet and heavy which made everything very hard work. The high alpine was closed all day so we spent the whole day (or half day rather cuz I only made it up at 12 again) exploring tree runs off of the crystal chair. On our first run of the afternoon we’d found a sweet line to the far right of the crystal runs which eventually brings you out on the traverse back from the glacier. On the way down me & Paul had found a maybe 60ft cliff that needed riding around, but we thought everyone else was in front of us so there was no worry of anyone else coming past that way. Actually just before that I’d eaten it hard because of not holding my edge off a jump turn, which was quite painful, although I’d nailed a couple of nice drops before that :)
Anyway, we carried on down and the run opened up into a big clearing. When we got there all but one were already there, but the one unaccounted for – Tim’s girlfriend Shannon – had come down to the left of where me & Paul stopped and was stuck on top of a 20ft cliff with a frozen waterfall about halfway down, which made the total drop maybe 30ft high. She was asking us if it was possible to come down because there was a chute to one side, but it looked pretty sketchy so we told her to go back up. Shannon took off her skis, went to step up and lost her footing. Everyone (including the 8 or so Japanese tourists who had followed us or someone else down there) fell silent as we watched her fall sideways, bounce off something then cartwheel down to a stop, skis and everything in pursuit. Time stood still for a moment but then we heard a “woohoo” from the other side of the brow she’d come to rest on then she stood up with arms raised to everyone’s applause. I can’t believe she didn’t hurt anything other than bruising her behind, I’ve got a picture of what she fell off that I’ll try to post at some point.
The rest of the day we hit another tree run which was pretty steep and hard work, then we did a big traverse off of jersey cream to an area which you usually get to by the glacier express chair. We managed to get a few fresh turns in but further down was really steep and heavy again so by the time we got to the bottom my legs were in absolute agony, but Tim made us ride to the bottom of the hill through the slush so I had to collapse upon reaching the end!

So that’s my recent news, oh yeah I bumped into Matt Wood in the village a couple of days ago – one of my friends from school. I’m actually surprised it’s taken this long before I bumped into someone I already knew!

And I just got my hair cut at a barber shop where instead of putting a towel round your neck they tie a piece of tissue, no expense spared.

Well it seems that the end of March/start of April is pretending to be January. We had another 43cms last night, have had flurries throughout the week and it’s been snowing heavily this afternoon. Hopefully it’s going to continue until at least Monday because that’s when I have my next day off! Actually it’s not so bad because most of the top lifts weren’t open today because of either the high winds or avalanche danger I guess… It’s funny though because it seems that every time we have a big dump of snow I have to work the next day!!! The ride up was quite interesting this morning actually because the village gondola wasn’t working so I had to ride the fitzsimmons chair wearing my normal clothes :s
Ok so to the point of my title…for my past few days riding there’s been fresh snow each time. I explained in my previous post how we hiked on blackcomb glacier for a sweet run, well this Wednesday me and Tim continued the team extreme antics on ‘Spanky’s ladder’, which is an off-piste run that requires a short hike from the top of the glacier express chair. It’s a double black diamond but there’s only a short bit that’s really hairy on the changeover from Spanky’s into one of the bowls on that side of the glacier. On this part we first ended up at a sheer drop and then, having backed out on that, we came to a traverse that was pretty steep and icy. On this part I lost my edge and slid down a little way into a rock field but fortunately I managed to dig it in before sliding too far :)
It wasn’t as bad as it sounds because I could easily pick out a line through the rocks, just it was too steep and slippery to climb back up!!! I think after that part we came down through Sapphire bowl then traversed across the mountain til we hit the glacier road which runs out back to civilization. The whole run was pretty untouched, very nice snow and pretty steep! It was a really cool route though, I cartwheeled only once, and there were some nice deeps and chutes to carve some lines through.
The next day I made it out for a 9 o’clock start, which is unprecedented for me, but we’d agreed that whoever was late had to buy a pitcher of beer so I figure that must have been an incentive. Plus we were a party of 9!! We headed up blackcomb again and went straight to the glacier for the first run. Unfortunately I think the wind had been blowing strongly across it because it was very ridged and there were big icy patches in some places that I figured could only have been caused by high winds. What should have been a really nice run was actually pretty hard work for most of the way down!! Oh well. After that we headed back up the glacier chair then cut across to the top of the crystal chair (which is to be avoided as it’s painfully slow) and did another bit of off-piste called ‘fraggle rock’. To get here was pretty easy and it only requires a short hike again, you just walk up this big mound that you can see when you start out and then head down the other side of it through a bunch of trees down a fairly steep pitch and end up back on the main routes. The guy who showed us the way lead us over a couple of small drops, one of which psyched me out a little bit cuz it looked like there wasn’t going to be enough run out but in the end I nailed it :P but he took a bigger one a bit further down that looked a bit dodgy to me but he turned out ok so that was cool.
After lunch we went over to 7th heaven to see how that was. We managed to separate into a group of 3 (including me, pete and pete’s mate from uni) and a group of 6 because I stopped to put on a jumper in a shelter at the top because it was f***ing freezing, but they got cold waiting and then pete didn’t realize which way they’d gone (although apparently they waited for us for ages further down..), so we ended up going our separate ways at this point. 7th heaven was all crusty for some reason, presumably wind again, so after one tree run over frozen crust we decided to head back over to crystal and do some more runs down there. Whilst exploring we found this unmarked black run that headed down through the trees off one of the green runs taking you back to the lifts, so we hit that a few times which was wicked fun. The second time we were heading down to the top of it off the crystal chair though we cut off to the left of the piste and somehow I missed a turn and ended up in a big tree well with the ground level around my chest.. it was incredibly difficult to climb out because every time you try to push up the snow just falls away, much like I’d imagine quicksand to be like. I was told before during my orientation that tree wells are the biggest killer in whistler, but I’m not a believer in heading out of bounds on your own anyway and I carry a whistle in case of emergency!! Anyway, I called down to the other guys that I would be down in a minute and eventually managed to clamber out. About 5 metres further along though my board decided not to agree with me about which direction we were going in and I fell into another bastard tree well :) this one wasn’t as deep but it was equally hard work to climb out of because this time I was facing the tree.. I had to scrape all the snow off the top of my board with my hands because it was sooo heavy to lift up!!! All was good though and I eventually emerged and collapsed to the amusement of my companions.
So this concludes my latest installment! Hopefully it’ll continue this way until I’m set to leave, just don’t know why it’s chosen to do this right at the end but what the hey. We’ve waited long enough..

Speak soon amigos :)

johan rippey X

Oh my god we just had the most amazing day’s riding, and now I’m soooo exhausted. This morning I managed to get out at 9, which is an accomplishment, and we went hiking into the backcountry. In the morning we went up to blackcomb glacier, took the t-bar to the top, walked up onto the glacier and along the ridge, traversed straight right across to the far side and then walked straight uphill to the far side of blackcomb peak. From that hike you can either loop round to the left and end up coming back down onto blackcomb glacier or go the way that we did and end up on the far side of lakeside bowl and eventually come back out at the seventh heaven chair.
The hike was absolutely killer, like walking up a blue run except in deep snow, althought fortunately the previous hikers’ footprints had made it somewhat easier than it would have been if we were the first people up there. We had to take a few breaks even though it was only a 30 minute or so walk. It was quite a feeling of satisfaction when we got to the top though! Plus the views from the top were amazing, it was wicked to see everything from a different angle to how you usually see it from the pistes! Check the photos again, I took a bunch and some are quite impressive.
Anyway, the first run down we traversed quite a long way along the far side of the bowl then dropped into the trees quite a way over. The powder in the trees was beautiful, although at the top it had gone slightly crusty. I watched Nicolas, our French tour guide for the day, stack it into a tree and get buried up to the shoulders too, which was funny. Fortunately we all managed to make it back to the piste ok, although we were a bit worried about Pete, who managed to go down past the “way out” signs, which to be fair were tiny and inconspicuous, then hiked maybe 100m across the mountain to get back to the bottom of the piste!! After that ordeal everyone was ready for some lunch but we had only 10 minutes to get from the top of 7th heaven to the glacier creek restaurant, so we hammered it straight down there, which froze our faces!
After a baked potato for lunch we headed back to the glacier and did the same hike again… We lost Nobuko though because she fell off the t-bar three times, much to my amusement – the third time I saw her and another guy going ass over tit down the bank to the right of the lift line. In the afternoon the sun had come out and it was incredibly hot walking up that hill carrying all our stuff. Again it was totally worth it though, the second run down through the bowl was absolutely incredible – we took a line further to the right and were carving out huge sweeping turns through untouched snow. On the way down through the trees I took a rather extreme line though which was pretty, er, difficult :) fortunately me & Tim managed to find our way back to civilization just in time.
After we’d done that run me & Tim were thinking of going over to Whistler and hiking flute bowl but our legs said, “absolutely not”, so instead we went for one more run top to bottom via crystal chair and jersey cream and headed to the longhorn for a couple of pitchers and some mulled wine :) awwwwwwwwwwwwesome day!!! Hopefully it’s going to snow again tonight but there’s a chance the freezing level could be at 3000m, which could be slightly problematic!!

This Monday I did a bungy jump!! It had to be done because we had the opportunity to go for only $20 (I think normally it’s $45 or $50), because we had some money to spend on an event for all the bussing staff at work. I think there was about 30 people who went all in.
It was actually scarier than I was expecting, although I wasn’t scared before I jumped, as obviously I’m an adrenaline junkie ;) because about half way down the jump I started thinking, “shit I’m not stopping and I’m falling a long way”! I think everyone felt the same about it to be honest. One girl Nobuko had to be pushed off the platform, which was pretty funny, prompting someone to shout, “sorry, no refunds”, lol.
There’s a video of me doing the jump which Yuki took on her video camera too, which is absolutely comedy cuz it looks like I’m a puppet on a string, I’ll try and stick a link up for it if I get it from her!
Unfortunately the riding that day wasn’t as great as I was hoping because my option board seems to be too stiff for me and I was having trouble fighting with it that day which crippled my feet :/ but I’m going to fiddle with my setup and see if that improves the situation. Also we had to get off the mountain early cuz we had to go get the bus to the bungy place at 4.30!