Getting up is half the fun with sliding snowshoes
It takes all of two minutes to get used to the Yupis.
You step down with one foot, and slide the other one forward like a cross country ski. Step, slide, repeat. Use the ski poles and you can propel yourself even faster.
The nylon climbing skin on the bottom of each Yupi slides almost frictionlessly over the snow, then grips it like Velcro. When you get going fast enough, you can hear the whish, whish sound of corduroy pants.
When you come upon a steeper grade, the kind of slope youd have to side-hill wearing skis, you can get on your tip-toes and climb it effortlessly. Its just over 12 kilometres from the parking lot to the B.C. Parks cabin at Elfin Lakes in Garibaldi Park, almost all of them uphill, and my Yupis didnt slip once.
Going down the ski tracks was a fun, out-of-control experience, but the real joy began when you stepped off the track and let yourself cruise down through the powder.
Tami and I overpacked for the overnight trip as usual, but even 30 pounds of weight on our backs couldnt slow us down. We blew past hikers on snowshoes. We left a skier on skins behind.
"The key," says Scott Fennel, one of the inventors of the Yupi, "is to know their limitations, what they can and cant do."
They can walk uphill through the powder, digging in and grabbing hold, as long as its not too steep, although in our frequent wanderings off the path we never really found a slope that was too steep.
If the track youre on slopes downhill, you can quickly find yourself sliding off the side unless you get a little creative. Side-step when its steep. Weave. Kick into the uphill side of the track with your uphill foot and slide it a long using the edge of your other foot as a brace.
Or you can get off that section of track and blaze your own trail almost effortlessly. You dont have as much surface area as you would with a snowshoe, so you tend to sink a little deeper. The more powdery the snow, the deeper you would probably sink.
Its coast snow, however, and we never sunk more than about five inches into the powder, which was practically bottomless. I took off my Yupis at lunchtime, and sunk up to my hips in the snow.
Fennel and his partner Phillip Lavoie made their first set of Yupis four years ago using oak planks, snowboarding bindings and some old skiing skins.
"We realized we wanted them as we were trying to find ways into the powder for some backcountry snowboarding," says Fennel. "We didnt feel our snowshoes were cutting the mustard."
The first Yupis were purely approach skis, and they worked exceptionally well. The real breakthrough came when they started using their skis to go downhill as well. "They were perfect for anything else youd want to do in snow country," he says.
Fennel and Lavoie started to Yupi all the local mountain bike trails, and began to hike the backcountry without snowboards strapped to their backs. With a little practise they could go down just about anything, providing there was enough snow.
When they started to manufacture and sell Yupis out of Fennels workshop, they had a number of complaints at the beginning.
"We found out they were taking the Yupis up on the mountain and trying to ski down the hardpack. No wonder they had a rough time."
Because the edges are substantially wider than a snowboard boot, which are recommended for Yupis, you cant use the edges very well. Besides, theyre made out of solid aluminum, have straight, unsharpened edges, and dont bend at all.
"There are some things theyre great for, and some things theyre not so great for," Fennel says.
As long as youre not skiing down steep stretches of packed snow, youre pretty much in the right place.
It takes just over five hours to get to the cabin at a leisurely pace. If we were motivated to go faster and stayed on the path, we probably could have done it in about three and a half hours. Surprisingly we were the only people there, despite the fact that there are bunks enough for 40.
It truly is one of the most beautiful and accessible places in the region, and the potential for backcountry skiing and snowboarding is enormous in every direction you turn. We were on a tight schedule, unfortunately, and took Fennels advice to leave our snowboards behind. The next day would be downhill all the way.
Fennel and Lavoie can make about eight pairs of Yupis a day in their Whistler workshop. Thats enough to keep up with the current demand, but with articles in Skiing, Couloir, Climbing and Outside magazines extolling the virtues of their product, they might have to expand operations.
Prior to building the Yupis, neither of the pair had any experience in welding, metal cutting, or plastics.
"I rebuilt the engine room on a fishing boat and its still running 20 year later. But playing with these Yupis, learning to use the machinery, learning about plastics, is probably the hardest thing Ive ever done. They look simple but there was so much trial and error," says Fennel.
"We talked to the people who know plastics and metals, and it took us a few years to realize that they really didnt know anything but plastics and metals. They didnt understand what they were for or how they were being used. These had to be built in the backcountry."
According to Outside Magazine, "In anything other than hardpack snow and ice (conditions where the Yupis flail), you can walk straight up 35-degree slopes. Steeper slopes are tackled by zigzagging, or by kicking the tip into the slope and stairstepping. Once youve summited simply point the boards downhill and, with the skins still on, ride the glide back down."
According to Couloir, "Short and fat, these skis provide good powder float while not sticking up above your pack like a two story A frame. Theyll cruise up a skin track without busting through it, and even kick steps up moderately steep pow lines Theyre also ideally suited to rolling powder approaches as they slide downhill in a controllable, turnable manner, and handle soft traverses better than (K2) Verts."
After a night in total silence, the only blight on the crystal clear night being a slight glow of Squamish light pollution to the west, we were ready to begin our decent. We ate as much food as we could and drank most of our water to lighten our packs and started towards the bottom.
We blazed a lot of our own trail, skipping the winding skin track and heading towards the ridge and a shortcut to the downhill section. We probably saved an hour this way, and got to do some good downhill sections from the alpine area into the trees as well.
By knowing the terrain, we stayed off the trail almost the whole way back, travelling perpendicular to the switchbacks as they came up.
One of the best sections, which was a mix of shuffling and skiing, was the area above Red Heather cabin, about 5 km from the parking lot.
There were a few faceplants on the way down, and one set of sunglasses went flying when a water bottle became dislodged from the side of my pack during a fall and swung around to crack me in the side of the head.
We tackled a few steep sections in the trees and both agreed that our heavy packs were probably affecting our performance.
At last we bottomed out, and rode the main trail out. Because its a gentle slope down to the parking lot, we never got going that fast on the packed snow and we could always pull off to the soft snow on the side when we encountered people. We did move at a good pace, however, and it took us less than three hours to get to the bottom.
We arrived back at the car exhilarated, our faces aching from grinning and laughing. We bushwhacked through two feet of powder in places, and it was nothing. Next time, and there will be a next time soon, we will take lighter packs. And unless were going for more than two days, well probably leave the snowboards at home.
You can rent or buy Yupis at outdoor stores all around Whistler, and Mountain Equipment Co-Op has even started to carry them.
Theyre available almost everywhere in B.C., and are appearing in stores across Canada as Fennel and Lavoie gain steam.
"Weve decided to let (the business) grow grass roots as people learn about them and understand them, rather than just selling them and hearing later about all these bad experiences when people take them out on hardpacked slopes," says Fennel. "We run into people who understand them in the woods and backcountry all the time, and theyre always smiling."
Every set of Yupis comes with a Yupi 101 guide. Read it and enjoy.