Spring is here…

Miles scopes the view from the top of Fishcreek Knob

Spring has officially sprung and I need to do a little spring cleaning of my photo archives.  As usual I’m behind in posting, but I hope you enjoy the shots all the same. Hoping to have posts on heli skiing in Juneau and in Haines soon, so stay tuned.

Tyler on his speedwing at Eaglecrest.

Caleb skins up the side of Showboat.

Fruit Bowl Kicker

Jesse throws down a double back flip.

Back to the well…

If there is one section of the Eaglecrest backcountry that consistently produces the goods, its hands down gotta be Fish Creek Knob.  David Lowell and I took a meandering trek from the quarry a couple weeks back.  I probably shouldn’t admit this, but everytime I’ve skinned up its never been the same route.  This time was no different, and we worked ourselves into a bit of a pickle by stumbling across an open swath in the trees that we wanted to find on our descent.  The only problem is that in our eagerness to preserve our line, we wedged ourselves into a steep and ridiculous climb.  To sum it all up it involved the hucking of gear up hill and using every available hand hold, alder branch, or small purchase to be found to claw our way through waist deep powder.  I guess there could be worse problems….suffice it to say, it was scrumptulescent, and like a couple of junkies we came back up to the mountain later that night for a midnight mission, to get just one more fix before it warmed up.

Fishcreek Knob face shots…

3-23-10

Well folks the Knob was where the goods were at yesterday. As David Lowell and I were gearing up with the usual routine of donning skins and deciding how many layers were necessary to not blow a gasket on the radiator,  we bumped into Ray Imel and co dropping onto the Eaglecrest Road.  With a few exchanged words and advice on snow conditions we began our ascent from the rock quarry.   After about a half hour of bushwhacking, and some poor route finding in the trees on my part we popped out below the Knob’s main face.  Despite  a couple tracks in front of the run-out of the main face, and some tracks down the main chute, compliments of Paul LaBolle from the day before, the uptrack and lookers left-hand side of the Knob were a clean slate.  David and I began the final push up the left hand shoulder toward the summit, to discover a minimum of 4-inches of the dry soft stuff. As soon as we wrapped around the corner into a more south-easterly facing aspect a minor sun crust was immediately noticeable.

After an inspection of the main chute, we switched over for the descent and the lookers left chute, which David had been ogling the whole skin up.  I took a few turns on the way down to find a variable crust/wind scoured section of snow that gave way to soft fresh out of the oven country-butter biscuit turns, and set up to shoot David’s meat huckage filled descent down the chute.  Once the chute was dispatched, we descended back to the open trees to get some more turns, and setup a few photos.  I found a nice open glade that David wanted to lay down a turn in and we began the process of scoping out the terrain for the best spot to shoot.  As I was assessing the situation and a possible backup shot, I heard David talking to someone.  Since we were in the middle of the woods I was curious as to who had happened on our skin track.  As fortune would have it it turned out to be Kanaan Bausler and his buddy Max, freshly returned from the storied heli-scene of Haines.  Further serendipity ensued as we discovered our radios were already set to the same channel as we made a plan to meet up after David and I finished up shooting his final turns of the day.  David and I parted ways and I watched him disappear into the trees.

I switched the splitty back over to ski-mode and skinned back up the hillside and traversed over to the left-hand chute just in time to snag some pics of Kanaan and Max descending the chute.  After descending back down to the main uptrack Kanaan, Max, and I skinned up for one last rally session in the trees.  I’ll let the pictures tell the story of the second half of the day, but time-and-time again I’m amazed at the quality of turns to be had on the Knob.

On a side note the rumor on the street is that a new trend is a-foot on the Eaglecrest Road…the wave. Give it up to your fellow snow connoisseurs and give ‘em a wave as you pass, as a way of showing your brotherly and sisterly solidarity in the snowpack.

Careful out there this weekend Folks!

We received over 1″ of rain in the the last 24 hours here in the valley. We have also seen quite a bit of warming during that time. Winds have remained strong.

What was fragile is now dangerous in places. Avalanche danger has gone from Severe to HIGH!

There should be some good turns in the new snow in places this weekend. But be extremely cautious and choose your lines wisely.

You wouldn’t find me in the hills without my tranceiver, probe, and shovel, as well as a good personal knowledge of backcountry conditions and rescue skills.

Watch out for avalanches over the next few days!

Fishcreek Knob…

12-11-09

A good sized group of skiers and boarders skinned and booted up Fishcreek Knob.  The clouds/fog came in and out the whole morning.  Once we reached the summit we were able to see our own shadows in a sundog, unfortunately it was so small and the contrast so low that I couldn’t capture it.  On the first descent we encountered a fairly set-up crust with variable powder on the first 1/3 of the descent, that eventually gave way to fast dry powdery turns.  When we reconnected with the skin track we decided that we couldn’t resist dropping off the north-side into the trees.  The trees held some of the best turns of the day, despite the lower 1/3 being fairly icy/crusty making for a workout of an exit.  All-in-all another great day in the BC.

-Chris

P.S. If you’d like to see all the edited shots from the day here’s the link: www.csmphotos.com/gallery/winter0910/121109/index.html