Comp - Keeping the dream alive~ skiing Brandywine in August
Full story with pics and video on my blog! ~
http://avidalpine.wordpress.co.....-did-that/
This time it was just Andy and I, (Andrew). We set out from Vancouver relatively early, in August the sun is up a lot longer than in winter so there isn’t as much haste in our steps. It was a beautiful day, if not one of the best weekends of the entire year… and I’m not exaggerating! It was pure blue bird, and hot as hell! Which ended up giving us matching freakishly red sun burns..
Once we got close to Whistler, we took a cut-off on the left and followed some logging roads up as high as Andy’s Ford F150 would take us! Arriving just around noon, the energy was good as we prepare all our gear.
It was my first time to Brandywine Meadows, so I was stoked to see a new place! But before I could see anything.. we had a 2 hour hike through some crazy forest trails with 50 pound packs on our backs.. and being that I’m a snowboarder, and not a skier, going through the forest with wings on your back makes its a little more difficult ! haha
After a good hour of hiking we could start seeing snow and the forest starting to thin out, and feel the cool alpine air finally sweeping through the trees…
I’m not sure if it’s just me…but there is something so delicious about the air in the mountains, its so fresh, cool, and invigorating… once I start to get that air in my lungs, I am overwhelmed with anticipation! and I feel a big smile sweep across my face!
We are surrounded by a beautiful 180 degree panorama of mountains, all with a healthy amount of snow still on them.
The only sounds to be heard was the rushing of water from the massive amount of melting snow on such a hot day.
We chatted for awhile about where we wanted to ski, and where we wanted to set camp, and once we decided we set off up the peak
Once up to a fair elevation with some flat ground and wind cover, we set down out gear finally, relieving the pain from our shoulders.
It’s not hard to be motivated in the snow, because soon as you stop working you get cold very fast… so almost immediately we were setting up camp, and off finding fire wood.
With about 2 hours left of sunlight, and with enough fire wood collected we decided to go for a good climb up and ride down at least once before the day was over!
We picked our lines and headed down, started a fire, ate some dinner, and off to bed!
We woke up to another amazing blue bird day!
And again, the same things apply in the morning… once we were out of the tent, we were packed up and ready to set off for our desired summit to where we wanted to ride down.
It took a good 3-4 hours probably for us to get where we wanted to go, as we took our time, enjoying the views and the beautiful weather.
At one point, we could see another group of climbers (without skis) heading up from a different route.. these guys had a little more angst in their step, as they actually reached the summit before us, and we started half way up!! haha but boy did we make it down a LOT faster! haha
finally making it to our summit we have the last of our water and food, take a good break and rest our legs, strap into our gear and ride down!!
