It's the 11/12 Alberta thread.

kevlar · Joined: 06 Dec 2004 Posts: 468 Location: YYC

...I've been banned Cool

aqua_toque · Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:12 pm Post subject:

A brief overview from the Commonwealth area on a cold, grey, and dry day.

No snow for a while and tracks indicate that all of the people have been somewhere and some of the people
have been everywhere.

Commonwealth Lake and Peak:

Mount Smuts. How many times will it get skied this year?

A little boney at the moment:

Is it just me or has it been windy lately?

The ever inviting Smuts Pass:

In keeping with the never a dull moment in Alberta theme of the thread, the following drama unfolded upon return:

He licked it! Licked it good!

It's a veritable wild kingdom I tell you.

andy m · Joined: 06 Dec 2004 Posts: 493 Location: Boulder, Colorado

kevlar · Joined: 06 Dec 2004 Posts: 468 Location: YYC

Lol, Our truck could use a moose wash about now too. Great photos!

Slogged up to Taylor lk / Panorama ridge today. Temps were -20 most of the am with a slight inversion up to -5 above 6500 ft. Skiing was fast (!) on a mix of sun crust, wind crust and pee crust. Damn we need new snow.

What I always love about this trip is when new folks think its only 1.5 hrs to the lake, and then argue with me when i say its more like 2:45-3:00 at a good pace. Have yet to lose that particular argument!

CSG · Posted: Sun Dec 11, 2011 9:01 pm Post subject:

Two men and a beast also headed out in the direction of Taylor Lake, but starting from Boom Lake.

Lovely place: larch glades, Gog quartzite cliffs, and a relatively high start from the top of Vermillion pass.

Conditions are classic Rockies. 80 - 120cm HOS just below treeline. TL and the alpine ridiculously wind-affected. Previously loaded slopes scoured to scree; thin facet-hard slab-facet combos, surface facetting on wind slabs, wind erosion of these.

Which isn't to say there isn't decent skiing out there.

And decent scenery to boot

A view back about half way through the tour:

From the road, we climbed up to the far shoulder and basically followed along treeline, skiing short 100 - 150m shots on each ridge until we got to O'Brien. With a second car, you could easily keep going along in this manner and getting down to the TC. As it was, days are short and we turned back at O'Brien. The descent to Boom was some ugly.

Lovely terrain out there, if you don't mind a bit of a walk.

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aqua_toque · Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 12:30 pm Post subject:

like

sillybunt · Joined: 06 Dec 2004 Posts: 581 Location: Calgary

Is it the blue hat or the scenery you like? Nice shots from what appears to have been a fun tour.

I had a short day on Saturday under sunny skies and a bit of an inversion in Kananaskis. We ended up on the margins of Black Prince. Thin cover down low and better cover up high. We had good support up in the glades on the upper half of the face and nice boot top powder turns in the 30 cm of old recrystallized powder on top of the denser mid-pack. Some facets at the base of the snow, maybe 10 cm. Anything exposed to wind looked stripped or hammered. HS was maybe 80 cm. We did two laps and called it a day at 1 pm. Black Price proper had seen a bunch of traffic and had many tracks visible. Lower part of ski out was thin but not as bad as I thought based on the skin up. I hope this pack gets refreshed before too many clear and cold days rot out the current tenuous support.

CSG · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 12:58 am Post subject:

I don't believe its quite acqua in colour -- though maybe if I adjusted the colour levels.

But it is a nice tour: the bottom of the bowl in the second to last picture is about 1.5 - 2hrs from the parking lot -- its about 150m from bottom to top. Along the ridges, there's not a lot of vertical either, but some fun little descents both going out and coming back. Also: very easy to manage terrain. There are always low hazard options as you go along. For longer days with good alpine conditions and stability, some steep descents in various couloirs and fans. I'm still curious to have a look in behind O'Brien Lake, which I didn't quite get a good look into.

Recommend. Would Tour Again.

iceclymbrr · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:39 am Post subject:

aqua_toque · Posted: Tue Dec 13, 2011 11:21 am Post subject:

ronan · Joined: 25 Oct 2005 Posts: 54

Hey guys - Haven't been here in quite some time, but recently been lurking about. Figured I would shout out a loud hello from Calgary. Heading out for the first day of the season on Friday...not sure of the destination...probably slack country with a few buddies - SSV or LL.

Will be good to drop a knee again

Jason

crumb · Joined: 04 May 2010 Posts: 494 Location: oregon

WOW ......From those pics, you all up north have some super duper beautiful terrain. Enjoy that for the rest of us please.

iceclymbrr · Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2011 4:23 am Post subject:

CSG · Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2011 4:42 am Post subject:

Really, really fine skiing these last few days.

Of note, CTE-0 (!!) on suncrust down 40cm on a southern aspect in Chickadee Valley, with a further CTE-0 (!!!) down 140cm on the basal facets. Let us all bow our heads in thanks to a strong, well-anchored mid-pack, where such a thing exists (hint: very sheltered areas), rejoice in the new snow delivered to us undeserving sinners but be very, very wary of the alpine for its is easy to get into trouble.

CSG · Posted: Thu Dec 22, 2011 1:54 am Post subject:

Well, nothing really new to report. But since I finally got the wherewithal to sort out some photos, and since the rest of the board seems so damn depressing (jeez, gotta feel for the New England crew), some shots from last Sunday...

Gotta say, this is really one of my favorite venues:

Adequate snow, by local standards:

What does it mean when the block shoots out by itself again?

I suppose one thing would be giving this a miss for a while. Still, this was one of the best runs of last season.

Meanwhile, on sheltered, well-anchored slopes below...

Pleasant ski out after a very rewarding day

Love that winter light.