The Black Tusk

Just a couple of weeks now until the the ride, and I'm feeling pretty good.  The rides have been getting longer and tougher, and the steep British Columbia hill-climbs seem easier every time.  PMC donors have raised over $16,000,000.00 so far this year but we're not done yet with another 20 million or so to go, so please donate if you can!  I finally managed to get up into some real mountains this past week, on an overnighter with Bailey and the UBC outdoor club to The Black Tusk.  

Hiking through Taylor Meadows at 5,000' in Garibaldi Provincial Park.  

Mt. Garibaldi is the highest peak in the Vancouver area, a dormant stratovolcano that sits just north of the town of Squamish, a couple of hours drive from the city.  It is the centerpiece of the amazing Garibaldi Provincial Park, 750 square miles of rugged peaks, glaciers and alpine lakes.  The park offers backpacking, mountaineering and rock climbing, and in the winter world class ski touring.  This time I would be heading to Garibaldi for a two day trip up the Black Tusk, an ancient and extinct volcano and now a crumbling tower of frozen lava.  At 7,600 feet the Tusk is a worthy challenge, and while it can be done in a long day by a fit party, we decided to load up with heavy overnight gear and enjoy a full weekend in the alpine.  

A very pleasant camp at Taylor Meadows.

We started the weekend with a five mile hike through the usual forest of giants, up to the Taylor Meadows camp just below treeline at 5,000 feet.  The system of trails leading up to the alpine here is very well used, being so close to the city and offering relatively easy access to some of the best views in southern British Columbia.  The trails lower down on the mountain are wide and well maintained so the crowds were not a problem, and we made it out of the big trees and up onto the alpine flats by early afternoon.  

Nearing treeline on The Black Tusk.
The Tantalus Range, across the Squamish Valley, in the background.

We set up camp and ate a sandwich, and made our plans for the summit.  On most summer mountaineering trips on high glaciated peaks, the middle of the afternoon is not the time to make a summit attempt.  By the time the sun has fully risen these mountains are a dangerous mess of soft snow and crumbling rock.  The mountain is most stable in the early morning hours, when the snow has had a chance to refreeze overnight.  Climbers will often get an 'alpine start', rising well before dawn in the hopes of being on the summit by sunrise and off the most dangerous slopes before the midday sun hits them.  This strategy also minimizes the amount of time that climbers are exposed to the sun, from which there is no escape.  The sun at higher altitudes can be particularly strong, and reflects off of the snow to burn every unprotected corner of skin.  Besides sunburn, this kind of exposure can exhaust climbers and cause dehydration and even snow blindness.  On serious high altitude ventures above 10,000 feet this schedule is also imperative in order to acclimatize to the lower oxygen environment.  Climb too high too fast and one is at severe risk for altitude sickness, though this would not be a problem for us on the Tusk.  

Bailey takes in some views from the snowfields on the Tusk.

Given all of this, we had the decision to keep heading for the summit that same day, or hang out for the rest of the afternoon and set off early the next morning.  The Tusk is really only a half serious objective, there are no glacier crossings on the route we had ahead of us, and the poor snow season this winter in B.C. meant that there was little snow cover left.  We also had the prospect of a long afternoon at camp with little to do and lots of mosquitoes.  We did all the math, and decided that the route was short enough that we might as well give it a shot that afternoon, and turn back if the sun became too much to handle.  

Final snow and scree slopes before the summit pinnacle. 

So, we packed up water and food, helmets, extra layers and lots of sunscreen and hit the trail once again.  We made our way up through the last of the thinning trees and into steepening alpine meadows.  The meadows eventually gave way to dreaded scree, steep slopes of loose rock and ash from eruptions past that slide out from underneath you with every step.  Travel over this stuff is quite literally two steps forward one step back, and can be pretty tiring in the hot sun.  This finally turned to snow cover, and we had a reasonably easy climb up to the final summit spire as views of the Coast Range opened up around us.  

Bailey negotiates the summit scramble at 7,000' on the Tusk. 

After a short break at around 7,000 feet to catch our breath and take in the views, we set off for the final climb to the summit.  This part was what we had all come here for, a beautiful summit scramble up the final steep rock tower of the Tusk.  This tower is the frozen remains of what was once the magma conduit coming up through the volcano.  When this magma hardens it is stronger than the surrounding slopes of erupted ash and rock (that scree we hate).  The scree crumbles away over the years and all that is left is a near vertical tower of hardened lava. Climbing this stuff can be a little unstable but fun as heck, and the geologist in me ain't mad about it neither.

Having a good time.

Mt. Garibaldi 8,800' and Garibaldi Lake from near the top.

Crushed it.  

Bingo!  

Finally at the top, we relaxed and took photos and congratulated ourselves on a job well done.  We soaked in the 360 degree views of high glaciated peaks, and chugged water.  I'll admit that after going from sea level to nearly 8,000 feet in a single day, I had a couple of waves of the familiar altitude nausea but managed to keep it together until we began making our way lower down.  

Feeling congratulatory on the way down.

We hiked our way back down to camp, ate food, drank water and tried to relax in clouds of voracious mosquitoes.  The next day we packed up camp and headed off the mountain, but not before a stop at Garibaldi Lake.  This is the catchment for all the glacial melt water coming out of these mountains.  It is crystal clear, freezing cold and a spectacular shade of blue as a result of fine glacially milled rock dust suspended in the water.  It was painfully cold, but a welcome reprieve from the heat of the afternoon.  After a swim and a sandwich we hiked our way out of the park and back to the cars.  Another summit, another great weekend in the mountains and a good 20 miles and 8,000 feet of PMC training.  

Taking a dip in Garibaldi Lake.  Brr.

Hiking past Garibaldi Lake on the way out.  

The Garibaldi Lake Barrier.  This wall of frozen lava keeps the Garibaldi Lakes confined high in the alpine.
A major earthquake could rupture this wall, sending the contents of the lakes down through the populated
Squamish Valley.  A reminder of the living landscape on an active tectonic plate margin.  

That's all I got on that one.  I'll be heading back to Massachusetts in a week or so, but not before taking a shot at the highest Cascade volcano, 14,400 foot Mt. Rainier in Washington.  I'll get a blog up on that one before the ride so check back for that.  Please check out my PMC profile page and donate if you can, thanks for stopping by! 

St. Mark's Summit

Canada Day fireworks off of West Vancouver
viewed across English Bay from Kitsilano Beach.  

Hi there, thanks for stopping by!  The locals are out, the tourists have arrived and summer is in full swing here in Vancouver.  Just as I had hoped, July so far has been dry as a bone, and the outdoor activities and opportunities for fun in the sun are boundless.  I have been keeping it up for the PMC, biking, hiking, running, lifting, climbing, walking and swimming.  It has been a lot of fun but not always easy, and I have not yet found the time away from school to go for a big mountaineering objective.  This has been depressing to say the least, but the summer still has plenty of life left in her and I will get above the clouds soon enough.  Before I fill you in on the last couple of weeks of good times let me update you on the more than $14,000,000.00 raised so far for the PMC!  We have just a few more weeks before the ride, and a few more months before the October deadline to reach the $38,000,000.00 goal.  I know we can do it but we're going to have to dig deep, which incidentally is what I say to myself right before blacking out on the spin bike in front of Canada's hippest.

The Kitsilano Beach saltwater pool.
Downtown West End and North Shore Mountains in the background.  

Once the clouds and rain finally scram Vancouver turns into a summer paradise, and every corner of the city seems to offer up something different.  I don't mind telling you that our own neighborhood of Kitsilano Beach is one of the best.  Besides the beach of course there's the 450 foot long beachfront saltwater pool, parks, lawns, basketball and tennis courts and the seawall bike path that will take you pretty much anywhere in the city.  It is nearly impossible to be sedentary here, and also nearly impossible to walk by it all on my way to work in the morning.  As hard as it has been to juggle a master's program and PMC training, I couldn't imagine a better place to have to juggle it all.  Not far from all this, right across English Bay, are the North Shore Mountains which is where Bailey, Evan and I went for a day hike this week.  

Deep in the North Shore Mountains.    

The North Shore Mountains rise steeply from sea level to about 5,000 feet just north of Vancouver.  Their rugged slopes directly abut the city of North Vancouver, where dense urban neighborhoods stop and wilderness begins.  This wilderness continues northwards into the vast British Columbia Coast Range, and one would have to go over the Arctic and into Russia before finding another city of any considerable size.  These mountains dominate the view to the north from anywhere in Vancouver, and are a great place for a hiking, camping, skiing and climbing right outside the city.  With a free Saturday, Bailey and I invited my co-worker Evan to drive up to the Cypress Ski Resort and hike along the Howe Sound Crest to St. Mark's summit. 

The Lions (5,400') from the Howe Sound Crest Trail.  

The Howe Sound Crest Trail runs along a ridge high above the Pacific, going through dense rainforest and over 5,000 foot peaks.  It is a great place for training, the views are incredible, the trail is in great shape and the summits are all of varying difficulty.   With just a Saturday afternoon to burn we would be doing a relatively short section of the trail from the Cypress Resort to St. Mark's Summit.  With good weather and good trail, we decided to be happy with our short day and do it as fast as we could to get some good cardio pump.  We did about 8 miles and 1500 feet of elevation, and we did it in about 3 hours, with another hour or so on top so soak up the views.  The mountains here rise so steeply out of Howe Sound that the shoreline is almost directly below the ridge, and views from the peaks leave you feeling like you are floating right over the sea.  Tiny ferries zip around below your feet on their way to Vancouver Island, and the Sea-to-Sky highway snakes along the shore just out of reach. 

Bailey and Evan enjoy some views.

It was a short-ish day, but the heat, the steep terrain and our quick pace made for a great afternoon of PMC training.  Besides which, I can't complain with being able to enjoy a hike like this and be back in the city within a half an hour.   As much as I love Boston, I will definitely miss this place when I leave. Driving a half an hour north from downtown Boston, you'd probably wind up no further than the North End of downtown Boston.  Paul Revere and cannoli are great, but I prefer mountains.

Howe Sound and the Bowen Island group from St. Mark's Summit.  

Cooling off in some snowmelt.  Beautiful. 

That's it for this one, I'll be heading out to the Sunshine Coast here in British Columbia this week for some world class cycle touring so stay tuned for that.  Check out the PMC website for info and updates on this year's ride, and please head to my PMC profile and donate if you can.  I'm up to 25% of my goal, so thanks to everyone for your support, and thanks for stopping by!

Stanley Park and Tough Mudder Whistler

Hello and welcome all!  Here's hoping the summer finds you well.  British Columbia seems rather stuck in the past weather-wise, and we still live under clouds and rain for at least half of every week.  Not to worry though, as the good stuff usually waits until July to show up.  Classes at UBC have been out since April, but work on the research project continues and things have been pretty busy in the lab.  I've still been getting out as much as I can, and I'd like to tell you about a couple of recent workouts!  But first, I wanted to mention that all you wonderful donors have reached $10,000,000 in contributions to the 2013 PMC!  So thank you!  The PMC is still a long way off of its goal however, and so am I!  Please donate to this great cause if you can.  This time around I'll be taking you back to the great Stanley Park here in Vancouver, and to the Whistler Olympic Park for Tough Mudder Whistler.

Taking a photo break at Prospect Point, Stanley Park.
Lions Gate Bridge and North Shore Mountains in background.  

 Vancouver is a famously bike friendly city, with wide lanes on most major routes and some neighborhood avenues designated entirely for bike use.  There are also a couple of large parks that are well suited for longer training rides, one of these being Stanley Park.  Located adjacent to downtown, Stanley Park offers forests, beaches, swimming pools, golf courses, playgrounds, sprawling lawns, an aquarium and a beautiful 6 mile, two-lane, one-way loop of road that encircles it all.  On a recent beautiful British Columbia morning, my lab-mate Evan and I decided to bike over to do a couple of laps and soak it all in.

Evan being Evan.  

The day was crisp and dry and great, the kind of weather that makes a northwest coast summer so awesome.  There were a lot of bikers out on the roads, but we started early enough to avoid heavy car traffic which made the ride through downtown to the park a little more pleasant.  The route around the park is perfect for a training ride and one is treated to a variety of beautiful views. The North Shore Mountains, the downtown waterfront,  English Bay, Burrard Inlet and of course the views inward to the forests and greens of the park itself.  The loop is long enough to not get boring with great road for some speed on the downhills and a solid climb to the top of Prospect Point.

Bikers on Stanley Park Drive and the slow moving seawall bike path.
Vancouver Harbor in background.  

We enjoyed a great morning cycling and taking in the scenery.  We did a couple of laps before heading back through the city and over the bridge to Kitsilano.  It was a solid 18 mile ride, and another excuse to get out and appreciate all that we have in this beautiful city.

Evan being Evan.  

Next, a ride up the Sea-to-Sky highway to the Whistler Olympic Park for Tough Mudder Whistler.  The Olympic Park is located a few miles south of the Whistler Village ski resort area, and was the location of the nordic events for 2010 Winter Olympic Games.  Today its trails remain open for public use and professional level competition, and occasionally a ridiculous event like Tough Mudder.  

Me in the middle, hopping fences.
Whistler Olympic Park.  

Tough Mudder is a 12 mile 'mud- run' with 20 obstacles spread throughout the course, apparently designed by British Special Forces to test physical and mental endurance.  The company that runs it tours the country setting up these courses, and for the past couple of years have been making a stop here in Vancouver.  My brother Rob had done a couple of these courses in his home state of Florida, and decided to fly out here to do this one with me.  It had been a while since I had seen him and we had a great weekend of eating seafood and drinking beer before the race, which probably did not help matters come race day.

Nice scenery at Tough Mudder Whistler.
Tough Mudder media photo.  

Monkey Bars obstacle.
Tough Mudder media photo.  

The obstacles set up on any Tough Mudder course will vary depending on location and time of year, but will invariably involve some combination of swimming through ice, wall climbing and electrical shock.  We had a great day for it and got off to a good enough start, but no sooner had we started encountering obstacles did Rob dislocate his shoulder pulling himself out of a dumpster full of ice.  Thankfully there was a medic nearby who twisted his arm back into place after telling him he should probably go to a hospital.  Instead we hung out for a few minutes, got Rob a sling, and kept running.  He would not be able to complete all the obstacles, but he did what he could and cheered me on through the ones he could not.  The obstacles were a lot of fun for me, and not to toot my own horn but they were not particularly difficult.  This was probably due to the fact that I could not, in my wildest dreams, run that entire course.  It was 12 miles of mud and forested trails and gravel roads, and being in the B.C. Coast Range, almost all of it was steeply up or downhill.  Rob mentioned several times between huffs and puffs that this was way harder than the courses in Florida, and  I believed him.

The ice bath, I almost died on this one.
Tough Mudder media photo.  

We ran probably one half to three quarters of the course, and definitely more than the average participant, and I was pretty happy with that considering I don't like running and running is stupid.  I will give TM credit where credit is due, the obstacles would be a much different story if you attempted to run this entire thing, and anyone able to do so would have to be the highest level of athlete.  That ain't me, so I would run up a hillside until I thought I was going to  die, and then I would take a little breather.

Idiots running up the 2010 Olympic ski jump track, this was a bitch.
Tough Mudder media photo.  

 All in all it was a fun day and one hell of a workout, though I felt bad for Rob having flown halfway around the world to watch me crawl through mud.  In retrospect I am on the fence about Tough Mudder in general.  It is a great way to get your average person inspired to get up off the couch and train for a goal, but its real purpose is a media marketing machine.  I wouldn't have any problem with this except for the fact that they seem to make a lot of claims to supporting the Wounded Warrior Project, a great non-profit aimed at assisting severely wounded veterans coming off of the battlefield.  From my experience, Tough Mudder simply gives the participants the option of donating through them, on top of paying the rather steep entrance fees.  I can't ague with this, any way to raise awareness and funds for a good cause is a good thing.  However I can't help but notice that it is TM participants who donate and the TM company itself, as far as I am aware, has not donated a dime.  I feel like this kind of activity would be vastly cooler if it were arranged as a non-profit organisation, with a portion of participant fees covering operational costs and everything else going to the WWP.  If people are looking for a way to get out there and challenge themselves, we might as well channel that energy into some good.

Your correspondent running through live electrical wires to the finish line.
Ridiculous.  

Rob made the webpage.
Tough Mudder media photo.  

That's it for me folks.  This weekend I'll be scrambling up in the North Shore Mountains and going back to Stanley Park for another ride, and next weekend hopefully getting some time away from the lab to get up onto something high and snowy before I go crazy.  My old climbing partner Jamie will be flying out to Oregon in late July,  and we're making some big plans so stay tuned. Thanks for stopping by, please go to my PMC profile to donate if you can!

Stawamus Chief

Hello friends.  Time is flying I'll tell you what, and it's hard to believe the ride is already less than two months away.  I have kept up training pretty well, and have moved all cardiovascular exercise (except for climbing, of course) over to the bike.  The weather is getting better fast, and the higher mountains are calling my name. I'm itching to carve out some time from school and do something big.  Maybe another shot at Mt. Baker, which you may remember I was laughed off of a couple of months ago by foul winter weather and poor-at-best ski technique.   For now I am contenting myself with shorter conditioning hikes closer to the city.  This week I was on Hollyburn Mountain at the Cypress Bowl ski area just outside of the city.  Cypress is one of three ski resorts whose floodlights illuminate the clouds over Vancouver all winter, you can drive to the chairlifts from downtown in less than a half an hour.  I went up with the UBC outdoor club to help teach a class on basic mountaineering skills.  The resort closed for summer several weeks ago, but there is plenty of snow higher up so it seemed a perfectly convenient place to teach rope-work and crampon technique.  The clouds didn't clear once that day so I didn't bother with any photos.  You'll have to take my word for it.  

The big wall on the Stawamus Chief, Squamish B.C.
Almost 2,000 feet of vertical granite, not for the faint of heart. 

Last weekend my girlfriend Bailey had her sister in town for a visit, so the three of us and my co-worker Evan headed up to Squamish to hike the Stawamus Chief.  The Chief is a 2,000 foot fin of granite that rises precipitously from sea level at the head of Howe Sound.  It is considered to be a place of spiritual signifigance by the indigenous Sḵwxwú7mesh people, and is named after one of their villages.  It is a popular rock-climbing destination, offering everything from small practice crags to epic big wall ascents on a near Yosemite scale.  It also has a short and steep hiking trail, climbing over 2,000 feet in about a mile.  A great afternoon of conditioning to be sure, but being so close to Vancouver it is infamously swamped with tourists and locals alike on most nice days of the summer.  Bailey and I had never done it, so we figured we would brave the crowds at least once to see what all the fuss was about. 

Mastering the stairs on the Chief Peaks hiking trail.  

It didn't take long to realize what we had signed up for.  After pulling into a packed parking lot we made our way to the trailhead and joined the train of people headed up steep staircases into the woods.  In any other city the busy trails would have made it hard to get in a good workout, but thankfully we live in Vancouver and the line of spandex clad tushes moved pretty fast.  This hike is very short and equally painful.  The trail is well maintained and a lot of it is covered by stairs, but they're steep and relentless.  It was basically an afternoon on the stair-stepper with nicer views.  

Traffic jam on one of the bolted chain sections near the top of the Chief. 

Nearing the top the trees clear out and you wind up hiking over granite slabs to the summit.  This was fairly pleasant except for the traffic jams at one way chain sections and ladders.  Beautiful views can be hampered slightly by the sounds of irate hikers arguing over right of way.  Bottlenecks aside, we made it to the top and were greeted with sunshine and sandwiches.  

The view from the top.
The B.C. Coast Mountains rise out of the Pacific Ocean at Howe Sound, Squamish B.C.

Hikers on top of First Peak (2,100') on the Stawamus Chief.  

Victory pose.

Atwell Peak (8,700') in the clouds, framed by cliffs on the Chief.  

We spent a glorious couple of hours on top, soaking in the sunshine and taking ridiculous photographs of each other.  Afterwards we found a more round about trail through the woods to get ourselves back down, avoiding most of the crowds and having a grand old time.  I don't regret my hike on the Chief, but I won't be doing it again soon.  Intense crowds, while something we all need to get used to on the more popular trails, can definitely take away from the experience of being outdoors.  More than this, it is an increased stress on the delicate ecosystems that we must disturb to get our fix.  I guess this is just another reason to go further and higher.  

Pleasant trails down.  

That's it for this one folks, short and sweet just like the Chief.  I'll be taking a few laps around Stanley Park tomorrow morning on the road bike, and I'm sure I'll tell you all about it.  I'm not exactly sure what else is in store for the next month except to say that plans are forming, and I cannot seem to dislodge the word Rainier from my mind.  The PMC 2013 fundraising total is over $8,000,000.00 so far.  This is an incredible number but still far short of the $38M goal so please please donate if you can!  I also wanted to let you know about an article I read recently on the Dana-Farber blog about how 75% of all pediatric cancer patients today will be cured of their disease!  This kind of great news is a direct result and proportionally related to the generosity of benefactors like you.  Thanks for reading, stay posted!  

Jasper National Park

Snowy peaks in the clouds, Jasper National Park, Alberta.  

Hey everyone, welcome back! Springtime is rolling along out here in Vancouver, and we've already got 16 hours of daylight for PMC training!  We have two months before the ride and 4 months of fundraising remaining.  Contributions have been coming in, so a big thank you to all those kind donors.  There is still a long way to go, so please donate if you can! Thanks!  Outdoor education has been the theme of the past couple of trips, the first of which to Vancouver's local rock-climbing mecca.  Each year the VOC runs a bunch of rock climbing courses in the town of Squamish, an hour north of the city.  Squamish is home to the area's best rock climbing with over a thousand routes on sheer granite, a perfect place to teach classes at varying levels of experience.  Squamish also boasts fantastic mountain biking, hiking and both sea and river kayaking, and as such is known as the outdoor recreation capital of Canada.  I myself would be learning the art of anchor building on rock faces, crucial to roped safety systems on steep terrain.  I had guessed my way through this sort of thing before, but being the means of securing oneself to a cliff I thought it best to get some  formal training.  It was a great day with great weather, and a few steep hikes to get to different rock routes.  The only downside to the day was helping the local search and rescue carry an injured climber off the mountain, a sobering reminder to everyone to think twice.  

Anchor building school in Squamish, B.C.  

The next trip would take me a little further from home, an ear popping twelve hour drive through southern British Columbia to Jasper National Park on the B.C.- Alberta border.  Jasper sits in the heart of the Canadian Rockies and is full of huge mountains and covered in glaciers, and I headed there to take a class in glacier safety and self rescue.  

Hello from Mt. Athabasca , Jasper National Park, Alberta.  

The Canadian Rockies are an impressive mountain range, made up of steeply dipping limestone beds rising to 10,000 feet or more.  This area doesn't get half the snow that falls on the B.C. Coast Range, but being so far north the winter snowpack often survives through mild summers, and the next year's snow piles on top of what is left.  Eventually these snow layers are pressed into ice under their own weight, and they begin flowing down mountainsides in huge broken slabs.  These slabs are known as glaciers, and knowing how to travel over them is another crucial alpine skill.

Peaks and glaciers in the clouds from camp in the valley.  

We spent the weekend climbing through huge mountains and learning how to find safe routes over glaciers.  The key is to avoid falling into a crevasse, a crack that forms in the glacier when it is forced to change direction.  These crevasses can be hundreds of feet deep and are often disguised by a thin veneer of snow, waiting for unsuspecting climbers to walk right through.  Failing avoidance, it is also nice to know how to rescue someone from the depths of one of these things, so we did some of that too.  

Mt. Athabasca (11,500') and one of it's glaciers.  Mountain hazards abound with crevasses beginning to open up and avalanches coming off of the ridge in lower left.  

Our first day was spent hiking around practicing rope systems for hauling fallen climbers out of crevasses.  This was a very educational day with lots of knot tying and messing with gear, but weather was bad and we did not go very high up.  Thusly, most of the pictures from this day are of knots and clouds.  

Jay, Mathieu and I talk about some rescue set-ups.  

Andy shows off his crevasse rescue set up.

The next day was a little more interesting, the weather cleared and we headed up into the alpine zone on 11,500 foot Mt. Athabasca.  We climbed up to about 9,000 feet, looking for safe routes on the faces above and talking alpine skills.  It was a great climb with much better views and clear weather, the only real hazard for the day was dangerously strong sun reflecting off the glacier.  This can make climbing much more exhausting, and can sometimes warm the snowpack to instability leading to avalanche.  

A large group of climbers head down from Mt. Athabasca after an unsuccessful summit attempt.  

Heading up the glacier on Mt. Athabasca in the sunshine.  

Jay and I take a break to enjoy the view.

 A glacier spills over a cliff on Mt. Andromeda.  House sized chunks of ice break off and tumble overboard here, definitely a place to avoid.  

Not a shabby classroom.  Talking about snow anchors in the shadow of Mt. Athabasca.

Clouds roll over the Canadian Rockies.

Our summit for the day, 9,000' on Mt. Athabasca.  Hot sun and unstable snow would block access to the higher reaches of the mountain.  

We made it back to the trailhead without incident, and so ended another great weekend in the alpine.  I made the long drive back home in good weather and scoped out a few summer mountaineering objectives on the way.  Over the course of the weekend I had done about 10 miles of steep high elevation snow climbing.  Not the most strenuous weekend but the skills I learned will allow me to explore the bigger and more serious mountains in this area, and be ready to help myself and others should anything go wrong.

That's it for this one folks, thanks for stopping by and please head to my PMC profile and donate if you can!  Every penny of rider raised donations goes to support the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in researching treatments and cures.  Next week I'll be heading up Cypress Mountain just north of Vancouver to teach some folks from the university outdoor club some basic mountaineering skills.  Hopefully the weather holds and I can get some good photographs for you.  Check out Dana-Farber.org for the latest updates on cancer research in Boston, and Jimmyfund.org to see how we're doing with fundraising.  See you next time!

Boston and Mt. Baker Fail

Hey hey everyone, how are we all?  I myself am well having just returned from a quick trip to Boston to visit family and friends, and to pick up the road bike that I'll be using for the ride in August.  I figured I might as well train for the summer on the same bike so we'll be good and familiar with each other when the big day comes.  While in Boston I attended a little fundraising party that my teammates Eric and Renee had put together at Mija Cantina in Faneuil Hall.  We brought in over a thousand dollars in donations and raffle sales, so a big thank you to all the guests and donors and to Mija, and a special shout out to our friends at Northeast Mountaineering for their generous prize donation.  I'd also like to thank Ray and Sons Cycle in Maynard Massachusetts for helping me out with some repairs.  Back at home in Vancouver now, and looking forward to piecing the bike back together and going for some rides!

Endless awesomeness of North Cascades National Park, WA.  On the way to Boston.  

Home sweet home, Boston on approach to Logan Airport.  

I'd better figure out how to ride this thing, and quick!

For now let me fill you in on a nice little excursion to Washington's Mt. Baker, just over the border two hours southeast of Vancouver.  Mt. Baker is Washington's third highest peak, the fourth highest mountain in the Cascade Range, and is widely touted as one of the world's snowiest places.  The Mt. Baker Ski Area saw snowfall of 1,140" in the 1999 season, the current world record.  As such it is home to a huge amount of glacial terrain and avalanche activity, and seemed like a great place for another one of my ill-advised beginner ski mountaineering trips.

Mt. Baker (10,800') and the North Cascades.

I picked up a couple of fellow VOC'ers early on a Saturday morning and we headed for the border.  The plan was pretty simple. We would ski up Heliotrope Ridge on the northwest side, look good, tag the summit (easy) and then ski back down to the car in epic style.  We ignored the miserable weather forecast for the weekend and assumed that the snow would have no choice but to let up, given that we would need a clear day for our inevitable summit the next morning.  The morning cooperated well enough as we skied up a logging road and onto the beginnings of the trail.  The snow continued to fall as we headed deeper and steeper into the forest, and I met and surpassed my comfort level.  We were making steep switchbacks up an icy and densely forested slope when I began my usual routine of judgment-questioning, but I knew things would mellow out once we were up on the ridges and out of the trees. The heavy pack made for one hell of a great workout. If I haven't mentioned my handy pack weight formula to you already, climbing gear plus high altitude winter camping gear equals misery.  It was tough I'll tell ya, but soon enough we climbed out of the woods onto the glaciated slopes to be rewarded with a complete and total whiteout.

Tough going on Heliotrope ridge.  

Into the clouds on Mt. Baker.  

We arrived at treeline on Heliotrope ridge in mid afternoon, and had hoped that most of the heavy weather would have moved on by then. Instead we were greeted with more snow, dense fog and increasing winds.  Visibility was terrible, and we continued on only by the careful and constant use of GPS, map and compass.  Having no spatial reference in this environment can be unnerving to say the least, but the thought of skiing right off or into something keeps you sharp, more or less.  We spent the afternoon slogging through the storm up the wide slopes of the volcano with avalanches periodically rumbling from the unseen Coleman Glacier to our east.  Eventually the wind got bad enough to make us reconsider our plan, and we beat a hasty retreat back to the nearest stand of trees.  We dug in for the night and gathered for dinner, and the snow continued.  My summit fever had been pretty well sapped by the end of day.  It had been a tough day of skiing for unskilled me, and my 25 year old second hand boots had torn my feet up good.  Besides which, I had a feeling that even if the snow did let up overnight, the entire mountain would be avalanche city the next day.  Nonetheless, a plan was made to wake up at 4 to check conditions, and I settled into a much anticipated sleeping bag.  At 4 am it was snowing and at 6 it was snowing also.  Our summit bid had been turned into un gras matinee (a fat morning) as Phillipe says, and we dozed and and watched the weather out the open tent door for a few more hours.

Having a laugh at breakfast.  Camp at 6,500' on Mt. Baker.  

The ski back down was, let's say, let's just say I'm not proud of what happened up there.  A heavy pack, deep powder, zero visibility and a bad skier make for some really terrible skiing.  I had no idea what the slope ahead of me looked like, and windblown snow in your face makes it hard to tell how fast you're going.  At one point I got into a panic because I couldn't turn my skis and was going way too fast, and feared going into a steep slope or cliff.  I hurled myself to the ground and dug my fists into the snow to slow down, in rather dramatic fashion, before realizing that I had never been moving in the first place.  That was a good one.  When we were finally back into the trees I did the standard Newton shuffle, throwing the skis on my pack in a clearly visible show of defeat.  There was no way I was going to continue that alpine blooper reel into a steep forest, and by now I'm getting pretty used to walking down mountains with a perfectly good pair of skis on my back.  I was able to get in a little actual skiing on the final stretch of logging road back down to the car.  I skied right onto the dry asphalt that our cars were parked on, I think I was too tired to compute the results before doing so.  Thankfully I still had my helmet on as my thick dome bounced off the pavement in front of a couple of confused looking skiers.  The perfect end to a perfect weekend.  Foolishness aside, I learned a lot about what not to do on Mt. Baker, and got in ten tough miles.

Making our way down in more snow.  

That's it for now folks.  I'm going to keep it going out here for the PMC, and I'll keep the photos of whiteouts coming for you!  Please stay tuned for the next one, and please donate if you can!  Thanks!