It’s been a tough year for backcountry skiing just about anywhere in the west. According to avalanche.org, there have already been 22 avalanche fatalities in the US and Canada. Not all of these were backcountry skiers, a couple were rock/ice climbers and almost half were snowmobilers.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, our season was slow to start and we were all complaining about the lack of skiable terrain. Our first ski tour up to Mt Rainier early in the season was beautiful, and the snow up high quite good, but it didn’t require much effort to look around for evidence of low coverage. Saying that conditions have changed since, is an understatement. Crystal Mountain recorded over 100″ of fluff (that’s over 8 feet) from the ten day period between Christmas and yesterday. The rest of the Cascades saw similar amounts. Great right? Not so.
Ski touring has been risky to say the least, and this has presented a huge challenge for someone like myself, who truly loves to ski tour. I miss the adventure, the wilderness experience, the peacefulness of getting out and gliding up the side of the mountain. Needless to say, I was looking forward to a couple days with friends east of the Cascades during the long New Years break. My wife and I woke up Thursday morning, car packed ready to make the drive east when I checked the pass report. All passes were closed! I’m typically a patient guy, but my lack of touring this year (or any skiing for that matter) has been difficult to swallow (especially after living in Whitefish, MT, last winter and knocking off 75+ days of skiing.) Not knowing when the passes would open, and fearing they actually wouldn’t, we opted for plan C (plan A, to head to Revelstoke Mountain in British Columbia, had already been scrapped), to spend some time with the family up at Whistler/Blackcomb.
I love the Whistler area. The backcountry skiing is truly remarkable and pretty much endless. Between the terrain you can access from Whistler or Blackcomb, to the peaks above and beyond Pemberton, you can spend a lifetime ski touring there and never hit it all. But this trip ended up being different too. Why? Because Whistler hasn’t been getting pounded like the rest of the PNW. Whistler/Blackcomb need a lot of snow to cover the fun terrain and they just haven’t been getting it. I don’t need to spend mucho dinero to ski groomers with 24,000+ people. I’ll pass. But that didn’t stop me from gazing up at the surrounding peaks while out skate skiing, waiting, patiently, for the day when I can tour again.
With the holidays over and the madness of trying to get photographs prints out the door for folks, I was looking forward to time in the mountains. Now, unfortunately, it’s pissing rain in the Cascades.
I should point out, that although we didn’t make downhill turns while at Whistler, we did enjoy some exhausting days of skate skiing at the new Olympic Park nordic center just south of the village. Very nice.
