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Feature - The good hurt

Earning your turns and other rewards of the backcountry By G.D.

Earning your turns and other rewards of the backcountry

By G.D. Maxwell

If Thoreau could find philosophical inspiration in the forests and marshy wetlands of Massachusetts, imagine what transcendental musings he might have conjured up if he’d spent much time in the wild places of British Columbia? The forest and ponds of Walden, though stunning in a quaint, New Englandy kind of way, shrink in grandeur against the scope and fury of B.C. wilderness. With forests so dense they’re virtually marked on maps "Travelers be lost here" and mountains that define the landscape, stretching off in all directions at once, so crowded and numerous it’s generally not possible to discern something as organized as a ridgeline, B.C. can easily overload the circuits of even the most reflective philosophers.

It’s easy to overlook the wildness of B.C. when you’re into yo-yoing the runs at Whistler. I know that sounds terribly ironic, but I can’t count the number of times I’ve gotten so caught up in the here and now of skiing, the turns and moguls and jumps – not to mention focusing on the open spaces instead of the trees – that I’ve lost contact with the larger picture of my physical surroundings. It isn’t until I stop and sit down that my gaze rises above the track in front of me and... well, I find myself breathless and philosophical about where I am. Whether it’s looking up the valley towards Pemberton and out across the Icecap, or letting my gaze follow the traverse of Overlord Glacier, or focusing on towering Black Tusk or the craggy Tantalus peaks, I am, in those moments, struck speechless by the power of this landscape.

In no small measure, that sense of awe is the lure of the backcountry. It’s what draws people to wilderness in spite of the privations and dangers inherent in travelling uncontrolled terrain in the dead of winter. Short daylight, unpredictable storm cycles, cold that defies all technological advances and still finds ways to numb toes, fingers and noses, and, of course, the ever-present danger that lies underfoot when people travel across snow lying on mountain slopes steeper than the angle of repose.

The backcountry is where the deer and the avalanche play and no matter what your skill level, no matter what precautions you take, sometimes it just lets go. Training, equipment and judgment are all tools that help mitigate against disaster. So does travelling with people who know what the hell they’re doing.

Enter the Whistler Alpine Guides Bureau.

If you’re tired of the crowded slopes, the tracked-out snow, the TSE-like up and down of riding the lifts all day and you’re ready to try something less manicured, the Guides Bureau can set you up with everything you need to follow the path less travelled. Even if you’re relatively comfortable in the backcountry, you can cut through a lot of the hassle of planning a trip into unfamiliar territory by hiring a local guide to take you on a day trip, an overnighter or even something more exotic involving, say, ice screws and vertical ascents up frozen water.

The Guides Bureau has been around since 1991 and claims to have been the first guiding operation of its kind in British Columbia. It was started by Jayson Faulkner and Tom Duguid as an adjunct to their gear store, Escape Route. Until recently, it was run as just that, an adjunct. Actually getting in touch with the Bureau was often a hit or miss affair.

But last spring, new blood was brought into the mix when Rob McCurdy and Lesley Weeks bought in as directors and brought a much-needed high-touch approach to the whole business. Rob, who’d done some time behind the Guest Relations desk at Blackcomb and his partner Lesley, who manages the catering logistics for a local hotel, are long on the personal skills that guiding outfits sometimes lack. I was lucky enough to talk Rob into taking Bob Barnett and me out into the boonies for the day to show us the unhurried, unpeopled world just beyond the next peak.

On an unexpectedly sunny Friday in February, we were waiting for him outside Escape Route at the early espresso hour of 8 a.m. He arrived with guide Russell Braddock in tow and the two of them quickly set out to transform downhill skiers into backcountry trekkers.

The transformation was relatively painless. We’d brought our own boots, skis and poles and appropriate ski attire along with us. To turn rigid bindings into free-heeling walkers, Rob and Russell fitted inserts to both our boots and existing bindings. Once they were snapped into the bindings and the toe and heel of our ski boots into them in turn, our heels lifted freely while our toes remained securely attached to our skis. A pair of synthetic skins, sized to the base of our skis, and a pack of safety equipment completed the transformation and we were ready to head up the mountain.

At the top of Whistler’s village gondola, we met up with Andy Wadsworth who’d gone up earlier for Fresh Tracks. A visitor from Edinburgh, Scotland, Andy, at 38, was the lone, intrepid adventurer of his group of friends. "I’ll try just about anything," he said, rubbing some bruises picked up the previous day when he’d unexpectedly set out down Peak to Creek on snow blades. A mountaineer familiar with Scotland’s Ben Nevis and other peaks, Andy was along for the uphill adventure, not the free-skiing powder runs the rest of us considered the day’s real treats.

We stopped at the entrance to Burnt Stew Basin long enough for Russell to give us a short safety talk. Russell, a visiting Kiwi with years of experience mountain guiding everywhere from Switzerland to Nepal to Alaska to his home turf on the south island of New Zealand, teaches ski patrollers mountain safety and wasn’t about to let us go off without being sure we had all our gear – shovels and probes – and our transceivers were working. One by one, we skied past him, each of us in transmit mode, him in receive, and the dopplering ping as we skied past assured us we would at least not go in complete silence if the world suddenly turned white and ate us for lunch. When he was satisfied everything was working, we skied off towards Boundary Bowl.

The draw of Whistler’s near backcountry can be easily attested to by the well-hammered track leading into Boundary Bowl and the Chilkoot Pass-like activity up Piccolo. After days without any appreciable new snow, the path to the Bowl was practically paved. We skated up to the edge, picked a line a short traverse away and poached the day’s first dozen powder turns down to the bottom stand of trees. So much for the easy stuff.

Now it was time to skin up and sweat. For the first of many times that day, we dug into our packs and broke out the skins. It was an easy, if at first awkward, task to clip them to the tails of our skis, peel the adhesive away from itself to stretch the skin out to its full length and worry the elasticized front clip over each tip. Once in place and firmly stuck on, we secured the binding inserts, clamped into them and started walking. It was as simple as traditional cross country skiing without the unbalanced feeling I always associate with skinny skis.

Our first uphill traverse led into trees and in and out of sunshine. The snow sparkled. Diamond dust, crushed glass, whatever unmarked snow glistening in bright sunlight reminds you of, it was all around us, blinking and flashing like a fresh-air disco floor. It wasn’t long before my breath became laboured and I began an endless dance with zippers and Velcro to try and balance the cool air to sweat and heat ratio. Going in and out of bright, warm sunshine didn’t help matters and made the stasis point ever elusive.

As a seasoned guide, Russell set a novice’s pace. I couldn’t escape the notion he could easily have sprinted up the hill had he not been burdened with "sports", as guidees are known in some circles. But this was a paying gig and he is an internationally certified mountain guide; as much fun as it might have been, it was business. He was always testing the snow’s light sun crust, probing with his pole, feeling its composition with his hand, noting the differences between exposed and shaded surfaces, judging the stability at different slopes. We may have been exhausted and just concentrating on moving forward, but he was plugged into the bigger picture. We were his responsibility.

Before long, we were perched on the northern flank of Flute, several hundred metres below the summit, removing our skins and packing them and the trekkers away. We’d reached another apex and it was time to catch our breath, click into downhill mode and make some curvy tracks in snow that just begged for tracks. After a short traverse, we had an open field before us, a couple hundred metres that disappeared into trees.

The first half dozen turns felt strange. Maybe it was skiing with the pack, maybe it was leftover lactic acid in the quads. Nope, maybe it was that I forgot to do up the buckles of my boots when I went from uphill to downhill mode. I’d like to say getting buckled helped, but some combination of all the day’s distractions was having a negative effect on my skiing. Whatever the problem was, it climaxed with a submarine, forward somersault into an endless mound of weightless powder that felt more like a refreshing dive into a cool swimming pool on a hot, sunny day than it did a wipeout. No fear, dude. With everything still attached – if snow-covered – I scrambled up and joined the rest of the group skinning up again.

The learning curve with this transformation trick is a steep one and in no time at all, we were mushing uphill. Having descended to the base of Oboe, we were headed for the peak which seemed miles away.

I’m amazed at the versatility of climbing skins. Combined with the heel lifts built into the trekkers, they make scrambling uphill a virtually no-slip affair. The gripping interplay of millions of tiny hairs grabbing zillions of snow crystal facets lets you defy gravity. The only limiting factors seem to be lung and leg power and the mental tricks you play on yourself during a seemingly endless, exhausting uphill climb.

Don’t look up. It just makes the ultimate goal seem that much further away. Remember the stories of Franz Wilhelmsen and Stephan Ples trekking daily up Whistler Mountain to scout the terrain of what would someday become our backyard playground? Their adventures must have been something like this. What were all the words to Subterranean Homesick Blues?

Barely avoiding a near-vomit experience, we finally crested the peak of Oboe. It was time for a break. We dug lunches out of our bags and dined al fresco, savouring what is surely one of the world’s finest views.

When the heartpound in my ears and rushing breath subsided, I was stunned to discover the silence of the day. I can’t remember a day on the mountains this year when there wasn’t a breath of wind blowing, but there was none for as long as we stayed on Oboe. Not a sigh, not a whisper. It was the kind of eerie calm that settles in before big storms and it acted to heighten the landscape.

A couple of line-of-sight miles away, the nearest visible part of Whistler Mountain was Sun Bowl, dimpled and golf-ball like with its skin of moguls glistening in the sun. Without binoculars, you could just make out a few pepper grain people snaking their way down its face. Across the void of Cheakamus Lake, Black Tusk stood in silhouette, not the gnarled tooth of basalt generally seen from inbounds but the ramped backside showing its full relief.

Off Fissile, the glacier was faulted and heaved, opened like a slot canyon running down to its tongue. Above Russet Lake, a ground fog was rising, looking exactly like discoloured smoke from a smouldering fire. It hung close to the ground with fingers rising towards a lenticular formation of altocumulus cloud slowly rolling in from the west. Blackcomb behind us and Cowboy Ridge across Singing Pass were bathed in the sunshine we’d enjoyed all day. We were in the middle of it all and it was spectacular. We were, in Rob’s words, "...reaping the rewards of our efforts."

And it was time to make more tracks. The slope from the top of Oboe down to Singing Pass is a riot of wildflowers from mid-summer to late fall. It opened up now as a field of untracked snow, a gentle descent of immeasurable length just waiting for our signatures.

Russell locked his touring bindings into downhill mode and took off, carving serpentine S’s for us to follow. Bob paralleled his tracks to the right with me to his right and Rob telemarking next to me. We stopped at a point just far enough down to still see the peak and looked up to admire our handiwork – four perfect tracks where none had been before.

And then we all started to laugh. Andy, who freely admitted to not being a powder skier, was straightlining his own route and barely making any headway. He’d left his skis lying base side down in the snow during our lunch stop and residual adhesive from his skins had bonded ice to his bases. Even if he’d been inclined to make turns, his initial descent was more that of a building snowball than a skier. His skins might just as well have still been attached.

After carving the rest of the descent, I was entirely ready to make my way out Singing Pass but Russell was convinced we needed to bag Cowboy Ridge to make the day complete and work off our light lunches. We skinned back up and started the last climb of the day. I asserted my prerogative as photographer to skip the last couple hundred metres and waited while Russell and Bob made powder turns for my lens.

After a final descent through virgin powder in a town that’s been short of powder this season, we tied up with Singing Pass Trail and pointed our skis back to town. I usually prefer to hike up Singing Pass because it hurts too much to hike down anymore. But I was glad to be letting gravity do the work, until the trail got narrow and began twisting through the trees. Spilling speed was difficult because the trail was so tight and just tucking was out of the question since we never knew for sure what was around the next blind corner. But after a while, we got into a groove and could almost taste the cold malt beverage we knew was at the bottom of the hill.

Refreshed after celebratory jugs at Blacks, we ran into Andy’s gang who greeted him like a long lost friend they’d written off. "Oh God, is this going to hurt tomorrow," he exclaimed, part boast, much truth.

I knew as well it was likely to be a self-medicated evening. My legs were jelly, my arms and shoulders ached under the weight of my skis, and my feet were anxious to get out of ski boots. But it was, in that masochistic, self-congratulatory sort of way, good hurt. We’d earned our turns and been to a near-resort paradise very few of those who visit Whistler get to see first-hand. Maybe if more of them knew what Rob and the Guides Bureau were up to, they might go home with more enduring images of wild B.C. If they didn’t, they’d have to be blind.

 

If you go:

Whistler Alpine Guides Bureau will arrange guides for anyone interested in visiting the backcountry. You should be a reasonably good, intermediate skier, and in good physical shape. Day tours, multi-day camping tours, avalanche training, ice climbing and snowshoe trips are all available. Day trips run $150. If you don’t have your own gear or don’t feel like packing your own lunch, everything can be provided for reasonable extra fees. Contact Whistler Alpine Guides Bureau at (604) 938-3228.



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