Comp-Paradise In My Eyes

  "You're gonna CLIMB the mountain then board down? Why don't you just go to a ski hill, or maybe heli skiing?" Is what I heard from most of the people who asked what I was doing for my vacation. "That's not a vacation" See after nine blissful years living the dream in the Kootenays, we made the decision to move to south eastern Saskatchewan. With a lack of steady work, and an excellent opportunity out here, we reluctantly packed up and moved the family to flat country.

  Spring, summer, and fall were actually good times out here in flat country. Days on the lake, skateboarding, motorcycling, and even some skydiving kept my need for adventure at bay. Then winter hit…….Damn. All of the sudden winter just plain sucks. In the past it was my favourite time of the year. Out here, not so much. It's kind of like being on an alpine ridge with the wind howling ferociously and the temps a balmy -30. Unfortunately there is no views and no slope to slide down. I had five days off and damned if I wasn't going to ride four of them.

  My regular touring partner Vince also moved away from the Kootenays for steady work. So we opted to meet in the rockies, which is closest for me and not too far for him. With no significant snow for quite awhile the rockies were actually relatively stable. Throw in some sunny days with alpine temps staying cool, and winds relatively calm, we couldn't have timed or trip better.

  For our first day of fun we made an attempt on Mt. Wardle in Kootenay National Park. On topo maps and Google Earth the route looked to be straight forward. Well the route is straight forward but the forests in the Rockies are much different from the Selkirk trees. Tight trees and thick underbrush slowed our progress to the alpine significantly. By the time we actually hit treeline it was getting late and we still had to crash through some forrest to get to the highway. We gained the first significant bump in the alpine and dropped the south face down to the highway.

Way better than the prairies.

Vince havin fun.

  For our second day we checked out the Vermillion area. It's not often we go to the more popular areas but we wanted an earlier day. We knew there would be an uptrack to the alpine, and after the previous days bushwakin' it seemed like a good idea……it was. We followed the well broken trail to treeline then headed up the ridge towards Mt. Vermillion. We climbed to around 2500m and found a weakness in the cornice. To our surprise there were no tracks to be seen down towards Haffner Cr. Wow. This popular area and no one  had dropped in to this bowl at all. Thank you. The snow was soft and fast and the run incredible. Why did I move away? We broke a trail back up to the ridge and rode back to the truck through the beautiful burnt forrest.

Ridge of Mt. Vermillion

Climbing back up to the ridge.

  The snow was so good we decided to head back toi the same area again for our third day. First we climbed to the summit of Mount Haffner. After building the boards and enjoying some bluebird views, we said hello to two skiers as they came to the summit and dropped in. The snow up high was better than expected and turned to fantastic at treeline. We dropped down into the Haffner Cr. drainage. With smiles on our faces we found our up track from the day before and gained the saddle between Haffner and Vermilion. A nice sunny climb up the ridge towards Vermilion put us just shy of the summit, where a rather gigantic cornice had a small break. Another quality run into Haffneer Cr. drainage had me buzzing. One more climb up to the saddle and we rode back to the truck extremely happy.

View from Haffner

Couple of skiers lovin life

View from Vermillion

Love it up there.

Looking back up to Vermilion.

  On the fourth day of riding I had to ride then drive a long way back to Sask. A highway line was in order. Made the desicion to drive up Spray Lakes and look for something fun off the road. It didn't take long to find one. Clear as day there was a nice looking line on a shoulder of Mount Buller. Park. Walk to bottom of line. Head up. Sweet. We skinned until it was too steep then started booting. The snow became too hard to kick steps in so we opted for a rock rib up. The climb was a lot of fun and the line was sweet, the first few turns were soft but that was about it. Rock hard snow and a steep line made riding challenging. I actually found myself throw in a hop turn or two.

Rode a combo of the second and third from the right.

Scrambling up the rock.

Mount. Nestor

Yup. Rockies

Weeeee

That felt great. Now for a long, long drive.

  Enjoy every minute you have doing what you love.