Snowspider

On March 28th, my dad, my dog and I had a late start. After sleeping in we drove up the duffy to the Van Horlick logging road. After taking the spur leading towards Snowspider we stopped at around kilometer 11. We unloaded our beater snowmobiles and left our truck at 12. We snowmobiled for another 5 kilometers before leaving them near a creek.

We walked in the flat meadow for about half an hour. Shortly after that we stopped to have a snack and admire the landscape. Even though it was very foggy, we could see that the trees around us were totally caked in snow. It was sticking to them in every direction. I was very happy to see this because I had been fearing the end of Winter. This reassured me that Winter in the mountains was not over yet.

After our break we continued on the flats. We reached a point wher we knew we should start climbing soon. My father had never been there before so he didn’t know where to go. The fog made it impossible to  know where north was. We headed in a direction hoping that we would soon start to climb. After about 20 minutes of wandering around we saw ski tracks. We followed these down tracks and soon found the skin track. I put some wax on my skins because they had started to collect snow on the bottom of them. After shedding a layer we started up the track.

The skiing looked great. The angle was enjoyable and the trees were spaced well. My dad said that if this continued for 1000 feet it would be the perfect run for toady. A half an hour after we started hiking I started trail breaking. I don’t usually do this for very long but I felt like it that day. I only did so for about 30 minutes. It felt like way longer and I didn’t want to tire myself out. Shortly after this the trees became scarcer. we reached a split in the trail. We took the left trail that headed up the side of a pretty steep slope. The other trail went in the direction of a small treed ridge. We lost the trail soon after it split. The snow had covered it. After skimming the side of the steeper slope for a while we started to climb it. The kick turns were difficult and took a while. This slope still had some trees on it. When we reached the edge of these trees my dad saw cracks shooting from his tips, this is a sign of an unstable snowpack. He told me the signs he was seeing as we continued up. we reached a part where we were at the bottom of a cliff. We turned left towards where we had started. Taking off our skins we had a snack and layered up. We started skiing down and saw sluffs (small amounts of sliding snow) following us.

We ski cut a small opening in the trees but didn’t end up skiing it. The skiing here was the steepest it would get and it was awesome. My dad videos my from the front and back. When we reached the denser trees we found our skin tracks. We stayed close to it because of the fog. Once we reached the bottom of the slope i was surprised. It had taken us 2 hours to ascend and skiing down took only 5 minutes. I though that it would be much farther. We still had time so we put our skins on and started up for another lap. We knew that this one would be much quicker because we didn’t need to break trail. During the climb I could tell that we were going much faster than last I’ve. It is a very nice feeling when you reach your destination much ahead of time or quicker than you previously have. At the fork we went right this time. Fifteen minutes after this we came to a stop. We were at abou the same elevation as our other turn around point. It had taken us half of the time. We took our skins off and drank some tea. This ski out wasn’t as steep but it was also very good.

We did need to traverse quite abit but we got where we needed to be. On both of the descents we had to wait for our dog. In the deep snow she was almost swimming. We reached the flats and unlocked our heels. We walked without skins on the flat ground. After side stepping and double poling we reached the sleds. After loading them up we snow mobiles back to our truck. The day had been enjoyable. We didn’t have a big workout but the skiing was great and being outside in the snow made my day amazing.