So I’ve been doing a little research and planning for another trip next week, to . . . well, wherever the snow is best within a 5-hour drive of Spokane. In the process of doing so, I spent a little time with pictures and notes taken during a 5-day trip to Southern BC and Northern Idaho last March. Somehow I got it into my head that the picture-size restrictions here at FTO had been lifted. With this understanding I began to feel that I no longer had any excuse for not posting a very late TR for a very good day of skiing almost a year ago. (I am a bit of a luddite.) Evidently I was wrong about the lifting of the size restrictions, but by that time I had invested too much time and energy into the TR to let it go.
My friend John and I skied a single day with Valhalla Powdercats in Southern BC on March 8th, 2013. I had never cat skied before, but I was impressed. Before we left the South Slocan base, the guides announced that Valhalla's terrain had received 30-40 cm since a Pineapple Express had come through a week earlier and that the resulting crust was "history." This proved to be true with the exception of two or three turns made on an open, steep, south facing slope below 1700 meters. Otherwise, all runs, while not super deep, were 100% untracked and skied bottomlessly from beginning to end. It had been overcast and cool all week, including the 8th, and all aspects above 1700 meters were all powder. None of it was cold smoke, but none of it was heavy either.
With the long transport times and the avi drills, first turns were made at about 10:25 a.m. I had one scary moment immediately prior to our first run. On the ride up, the guides gave us all a little lecture about loading and unloading of the cat. The takeaway was supposed to be that more efficient loading and unloading would equal more runs. Three somewhat maniacal Aussies sitting in the back of the cat took this to heart and threw everyone’s skis to the ground before I had a chance to get out of the cat. I ski tele, which, of course means my skis don’t have brakes. One of my skis had landed binding-side-down, the other apparently landed right-side-up, because where it should have been was simply a track heading over the near horizon line straight down the pitch we were about to ski. Fortunately, the ski is rockered and had not submarined. Even more fortunately, just past the horizon line, the track stopped at the base of a narrow tree. Retrieval nonetheless took a few minutes and everybody was a little more careful with the gear for the rest of the day.
Terrain was a very nice mix of open bowls, alpine chutes, high meadow, open trees and tight trees. We skied a lot more steep terrain than I expected given the then-current avi bulletins. One of the guides gave me a topo of Valhalla's current and future holdings at the end of the day. From it I could tell we skied from as high as 2300 meters to as low as about 1600 meters over the course of the day. Vertical drops on the map were generally greater than I had expected judging only by eyeball and the time it took to ski each run. None of Valhalla's terrain is technically above tree line, although we skied a lot of high, wide-open pitches that, the guides told us, were talus fields in the summer. Very little of the terrain appeared to be obvious recent cuts, but it can be difficult to tell with a 3 meter + base. Overall, I was very impressed and very much enjoyed the day.
It was interesting to watch some national stereotypes in action. Excluding the guides, our group was composed of 6 Americans, 3 Canadians and 3 Australians. The Canadians were relentlessly generous and polite. Without exception each took the attitude of “everyone’s a friend on a powder day, eh?” In the friendliest possible way, the Aussies were definitely practitioners of the no-friends-on-a-powder-day method. To me, it seemed like the Americans in the group were impressed enough by the example set by the Canadians to end up mostly in between these two extremes. It didn’t take more than a run or two for the Aussies to figure this out and eventually the guides had to be somewhat aggressive about insisting on a rotation for first crack at each of the pitches. Even so, more than once, when skiing a pitch early in the descent order I found one of the Aussies snowballing just past the tails of my skis.
We skied until exactly 4 p.m. with no lunch break. Meals and snacks were abundant, excellent, and eaten on the rides up. We got in 10 full runs, plus a final run to the cat that was about 70% commuting on a cat road through very dense forest. After our 2nd run, when our slowest skier (a 65-year old self-proclaimed “eastern skier” from NH) bruised his knee in a fall into a tree well and decided to sit the rest of the day out, our group was reasonably strong. Our guides and driver seemed genuinely committed to squeezing in as many runs with as much variety as possible. Nonetheless, one of our boarders had another significant tree-well incident late in the day. Were it not for these two incidents, I think we would likely have had an additional run or two.
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. The pictures in the first set (i.e., the good ones) are from Valhalla’s photographer. Those in the second set are mine. I’m in green. My friend John is in red.
My friend John and I skied a single day with Valhalla Powdercats in Southern BC on March 8th, 2013. I had never cat skied before, but I was impressed. Before we left the South Slocan base, the guides announced that Valhalla's terrain had received 30-40 cm since a Pineapple Express had come through a week earlier and that the resulting crust was "history." This proved to be true with the exception of two or three turns made on an open, steep, south facing slope below 1700 meters. Otherwise, all runs, while not super deep, were 100% untracked and skied bottomlessly from beginning to end. It had been overcast and cool all week, including the 8th, and all aspects above 1700 meters were all powder. None of it was cold smoke, but none of it was heavy either.
With the long transport times and the avi drills, first turns were made at about 10:25 a.m. I had one scary moment immediately prior to our first run. On the ride up, the guides gave us all a little lecture about loading and unloading of the cat. The takeaway was supposed to be that more efficient loading and unloading would equal more runs. Three somewhat maniacal Aussies sitting in the back of the cat took this to heart and threw everyone’s skis to the ground before I had a chance to get out of the cat. I ski tele, which, of course means my skis don’t have brakes. One of my skis had landed binding-side-down, the other apparently landed right-side-up, because where it should have been was simply a track heading over the near horizon line straight down the pitch we were about to ski. Fortunately, the ski is rockered and had not submarined. Even more fortunately, just past the horizon line, the track stopped at the base of a narrow tree. Retrieval nonetheless took a few minutes and everybody was a little more careful with the gear for the rest of the day.
Terrain was a very nice mix of open bowls, alpine chutes, high meadow, open trees and tight trees. We skied a lot more steep terrain than I expected given the then-current avi bulletins. One of the guides gave me a topo of Valhalla's current and future holdings at the end of the day. From it I could tell we skied from as high as 2300 meters to as low as about 1600 meters over the course of the day. Vertical drops on the map were generally greater than I had expected judging only by eyeball and the time it took to ski each run. None of Valhalla's terrain is technically above tree line, although we skied a lot of high, wide-open pitches that, the guides told us, were talus fields in the summer. Very little of the terrain appeared to be obvious recent cuts, but it can be difficult to tell with a 3 meter + base. Overall, I was very impressed and very much enjoyed the day.
It was interesting to watch some national stereotypes in action. Excluding the guides, our group was composed of 6 Americans, 3 Canadians and 3 Australians. The Canadians were relentlessly generous and polite. Without exception each took the attitude of “everyone’s a friend on a powder day, eh?” In the friendliest possible way, the Aussies were definitely practitioners of the no-friends-on-a-powder-day method. To me, it seemed like the Americans in the group were impressed enough by the example set by the Canadians to end up mostly in between these two extremes. It didn’t take more than a run or two for the Aussies to figure this out and eventually the guides had to be somewhat aggressive about insisting on a rotation for first crack at each of the pitches. Even so, more than once, when skiing a pitch early in the descent order I found one of the Aussies snowballing just past the tails of my skis.
We skied until exactly 4 p.m. with no lunch break. Meals and snacks were abundant, excellent, and eaten on the rides up. We got in 10 full runs, plus a final run to the cat that was about 70% commuting on a cat road through very dense forest. After our 2nd run, when our slowest skier (a 65-year old self-proclaimed “eastern skier” from NH) bruised his knee in a fall into a tree well and decided to sit the rest of the day out, our group was reasonably strong. Our guides and driver seemed genuinely committed to squeezing in as many runs with as much variety as possible. Nonetheless, one of our boarders had another significant tree-well incident late in the day. Were it not for these two incidents, I think we would likely have had an additional run or two.
I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. The pictures in the first set (i.e., the good ones) are from Valhalla’s photographer. Those in the second set are mine. I’m in green. My friend John is in red.
