Read the full review on the Rab Kinetic Jacket here.

If you are user Uptrack then send us an e-mail at info (at) backcountryskiingcanada.com and let us know your shipping address, contact info, size and colour preferences and we will get that jacket off to you!

If you didn't win our first prize then be sure to enter our second prize and you could win a Men’s or Women’s Rab Vapour Lite Alpine Jacket, pictured below.

Congrats again to the new winner of our first prize!

The snow starts at the trail junctions coming up from the Pemberton valley bottom (the way we went) and the upper route from the Hurley FSR. The river is pretty high at Wolverine Creek so you need to walk across a fallen log to get yourself on the north side of the river. After this, there's about 1.6km of consolidated snow. The lake is still frozen.

Some other hikers were able to drive right to the trailhead on the upper route.

Biking down, the trail is totally clear but has become pretty overgrown at the bottom.

In a few weeks the snow should be totally gone. Game on for summer!

The subject of today’s review, the Mile High Mountaineering Salute 34 pack, is designed with the same chassis and principles as the Mile High Mountaineering PowderKeg 32 ski touring pack. These principles include creating an innovative, feature rich pack with a clean exterior design. We’ve been eagerly waiting to get our hands on the Salute 34 and it proved to be every bit as great as we had hoped.

Did I mention the best feature of all? The Snake-Loader zipper. Read the rest of the review to see what this revolutionary feature is all about.

There are glacier monitoring sites in the Coast Mountains and in the Rockies, but only recently have there been sites in the CCRB. To improve our understanding of glacier change in the basin the Columbia Basin Trust has supported University of Northern British Columbia to establish some monitoring sites in the CCRB. Kokanee Glacier is one of them.

On May 5-11 we setup a glacier mass balance stake network on the Kokanee Glacier from Cond Peak to the glacier terminus above Joker Lakes. We found an average snow depth of 4.8 m, which made for long days digging to ice. The two pits (indicated by yellow on the map) were refilled, but could pose a hazard as the pits melt out.

(left) Jocelyn collecting snow density samples, and (right) Chris digging 5 m down to glacier ice.

The stakes are aluminium poles drilled into the snow or ice. Please do not move these poles, as they provide crucial scientific data to gauge summer and winter gains and losses of the glacier.

Aluminium stake (photo by Jocelyn Hirose).

The approximate locations of the poles are shown here:

What can you do?

If you're skiing or hiking around the stake network and see the poles leaning over significantly or completely tipped over please give us a heads up by posting your comments on this forum, but please do not move the poles from where they lie. 

Thank you and keep enjoying the majestic white beauties in your backyard!

(click to get a larger view of any of these photos)

By the way if you are interested in winning a Rab Zephyr windshell like the one pictured below in the picture then check out our Summer Stoke Comp as this in the prize for July. 

Or if you want to see what you can win this month from Rab then check out this post which includes the (relatively easy) question you answer in order to qualify to win before June 30th.

From the summit of Toad Mountain you can see Kokanee Glacier Park, the city of Nelson, Whitewater Ski Resort as well as Copper and Steed Mountain which are part of the Bonnington Traverse. At 6,334 ft / 1,931 metres Toad mountain is no giant and based on peakery data, it ranks as the 2975th highest mountain in British Columbia and the 4166th highest in Canada. It's relatively easy terrain provides a nice summer ridge walk suitable for families, kids and Swedish visitors but in early spring (such as on our ascent on June 15th) it is typically completely covered in snow so extra time is required. We took the standard route to the summit starting at the old Silver King Mine site but on the return portion we opted for the much faster bush-wack which is a b-line from the summit to the parking area.

Check out all the details of this hike including elevation gain, time and even a google map by having a look at our Suunto Moves Count page here. 

Teton Gravity Research's web series Moments takes a look at a stream of production snapshots from the filming of The Dream Factory in Pemberton, BC. Each behind-the-scenes shot is 1 to 1 ½ seconds long and edited together to give a sense of what it was like filming The Dream Factory with the TGR athletes.

Inspired by Cesar Kuriyama's "1 Second Everyday — Age 30″ video, Moments is a web series by Teton Gravity Research that pieces together snapshots from the filming of The Dream Factory during the 2011-'12 season. Celebrate moments from locations such as Jackson, Anchorage, Valdez, the northern Chugach, Canada's Powder Highway, and Pemberton, BC.

Traditionally the affordable packable rain jacket was sort of limited on it's ability to provide much more than an emergency shelter during a hike, forcing you to suffer a humid, clammy green house effect if worn while actually hiking. The jacket that I tested stands to change all this, giving people an option of being comfortably dry from the outside and from the inside as well....

Read the complete review over here in our gear review section.