Skin deep

Three days ago our Latvian representative Martin hulk smashed his way through a touring binding, so he made another attempt yesterday with the snowboarding group. Likelyhood is that the binding was faulty, but EXACTLY the same thing happened to him again! Martin was also set to be touring today, but due to the second equipment malfunction, i've taken his place in todays group.


The day didn't get off to the best start...

IDIOT!

It wasn't too bad as you get two forgotten pass freebies before you have to start paying for them. The day quickly got better though as we dropped out of bounds into the huge boulder field at the foot of Mammoth Head. We skinned up through the boulders- some of which are the size of houses - and upon crossing one, a loud 'whumpf' broke out of the snow and a crack split about 20m across. It definately scared Will who was pretty much on top of the slab at the time! It was still safe to continue up the pass, and after we summited we deskinned and ripped our first fresh powder line of the day right into the bottom of Mongolia bowl. Great fun, no going back now!

The complete ski touring route, tracked with GPS.

Time to go up again, and Steve had thoughts of some first descents further afield into Outer Mongolia bowl. We were all pretty keen today and making good progress up the climbs - our technique has improved massively from the first baby steps of only 3 days ago - so were all up for heading out into the wilderness a bit further from the civilisation of the ski area boundary. It was a pretty long hike out but rewarded us with some great powder lines. The end of this took us to pretty much the furthest point we were going to go, it was still a very long way back to resort!

We skinned up the first pass back out to Mongolia bowl and hugged the tree line we spotted on the way over this morning. It was a great shout and before long we were slashing powder lines through the trees like we owned the place

One more skin up and we're back within the reaches of Fernie Alpine Resort. It was a long ascent but we managed to reach the pass in 40 minutes, ahead of schedule, so we decided to get some extra vertical and reach the highest point of Mammoth ridge that you can ski from. Turned out to be a great idea and gave us some awesome fresh turns on the way back into resort. In reality, the avalanche risk was quite low, but in the backcountry you take EVERYTHING seriously, and i have to admit, standing on that ridge ready to drop in and watching sluff coming off the cliffs above, i was pretty nervous!

Once we were down we headed straight for Corner Pocket for some apres ski entertainment. The 11 weekers have had their level 1 instructor exams all week and get the results today, so there was plenty of beer going down and some live music to kick things off. Its been an exhausting but awesome day in the backcountry and looking out the window at the snow falling with a beer in hand and a smile on my face, i sat there a very happy man. Congratulations to all the newly qualified ski/snowboard instructors, good job!