mt Seymour circumnavigation

This "project" was hidden somewhere deep in my head. But probably from the first time being on mt Seymour and seeing this gully, I wanted to ski it. There were better snow conditions this year, but 30cm of fresh snow although heavy, I couldn't resist to try it on last Sunday. With Juraj we entered this 150m SE facing future, 53deg steep in some short section and pretty narrow in one spot. Juraj going first took some of the fresh with him and left for me something that is hard to describe. Ok it was hard :) But fun and after few poser shots on the bottom off we went towards Runner peak. This part of the area doesn't get much visit especially in the winter time (my guess would be 2-3 parties). We enjoyed this remote slopes down from Runner (west) and completed our circumnavigation hiking to the top of mt Seymour (1455). 1 more fun run and back to the car and back to my family. Altogether 5 hours and 1400m and 6 times putting the skins on :)

My girly blog post

My first thought was - eh, if I was a guy, I would put this on our blog.

After couple of hours - ah hell with it!

...and so here it is, my girly blog post.

On our weekly ski trip to our  north shore mountains (remember, we have just about 4 hours to get back to kids!), as we near the first bump of Mt. Seymour, I notice a guy in shorts. I make  a comment to my husband - "I wish that guy would tumble down and get the snow right on his b...."

Don't take me wrong, it was a beautiful day, pretty warm. But I just don't like seeing this kind of "gear" in the mountains, even if it's "just" our local mountains. People have died here and I hate how they get constantly underestimated.

As we hurry around the first pump with at least 15 people on top of it, I nearly loose balance skiing down towards the 2nd peak with the skins on. That makes me think of the guy in shorts- "I shouldn't have talked like that, now I will get it back in return". I did not know at the time how much truth was in those thoughts. 

On the 2nd peak I secretly swear at couple of people that cause me to not go and ski with full bladder. We take the best line from the 2nd peak down to the gully, traverse, and again another even better line below the 3rd peak. I stop in the middle of the run on a steep slope as I cannot hold it anymore, put my pants down and assume this cute girly position. In a split of a second I realize it's all going wrong as I loose balance and start falling ... yeah, falling with my naked bum into the arms of Seymour powder. Yeah, our loved powder. Everywhere, on my bum, in my ski pants, underneath my shirt. How is this not connected to the guy in shorts! I hate him at this moment even more...until I start laughing about it which takes me about a minute, because as I said - it's a beautiful and warm day.

So that was my story. Now -beware of your thoughts and comments about other people! You never know what's about to happen as a result of them.

Just some of the driving skills training...

This one ended up with broken birfield :(

Parents are awesome!

Since I am a parent and awesome as well :) I must explain this a bit. With 2 small children "running" around, every time on skis with El is very precious. And every time her mother takes care of our children for few hours, we enjoy all of it on local slopes above North Shore. With the visibility not so good, I decided on Hollyburn which has some descent tree skiing. But going up I realized pretty quick this won't be much fun (hard snow with just little bit of dust). Plan B was to cross the woods from top of mt Hollyburn towards mt Strachan and ski NW slopes towards Howe sound CT. Things started to improve with gaining the altitude and on the best descent of the day we've found 20-30cm of fresh snow. Next time we should skip the boring part and head straight to this area. Short video:

Magical weekend.

Well for me every weekend is something special. As long as I don't have to work. This time, the plan on Saturday was Mt. Seymour backcountry with my friend Juraj and on Sunday kayaking Squamish river and hiking up Grouse mt. in the afternoon. Thankfully to El's parents and the weather, all 3 things were really enjoyable. Now I can say, who stayed in the city, was a looser. I mean can you call somebody who miss the opportunity to ski in the sun above the clouds and kayak in the morning frost warmed by the sun a looser? I think you can :)

...let the winter begin!

Mt Cayoosh. This is a classic winter season opener. 1300m elevation gain and you can ski all the way to the car. Well, the last 40min are pretty tough. On January 2. I wanted to discover some powder in this area but to my small disappointment everything was wind blown, wind moved and so on :) But still, this is a great run in beautiful surroundings and being with your friends in the backcountry... what more do you want? Ok, we need more snow :) Forrest at 1400 was still a bit open. This was my -I think- 5th time up on the summit, so next time I would like to take a look at some other ski projects in this area as Million $ couloir etc.

https://picasaweb.google.com/oscar.nika/MtCayoosh2561m

Telegraph cove- kayaking with whales

I never thought kayaking can be so scary and so beautiful. My parents came for a 5 week visit to meet my 20 months old son for the first time. This was very special for me and them. It was their 2nd visit in BC, and again I wanted to show them how spectacular the nature here is. The reason why we decided to stay here. Telegraph cove is a small village on the northern part of Vancouver Island, 350 km from Nanaimo. By small village I mean 6 houses (maybe 7:) but everything necessary for life is there: General store, coffee shop, museum, motel, kayak rental, marina, campground. Ok so maybe 10 houses. I can imagine how empty and rough this place gets in winter but in summer it was just perfect. We spent 7 nights in the tent. But every day we went on the water to watch humpback whales, orcas, bears, dolphins, seals, sea lions, eagles ... and everyday we saw so much more than what we expected. The wildlife around the bay can get really busy. But there were also days when fishing was the most fun part of the day. Leaving this place and coming back home was a civilization shock for us and we will be back to explore Vancouver Island coast.

mt. Hanover, not quite in Germany

Last weekend trip led us to local mountain just few km far away from our home. Mt Hanover (1748m) was in my view for few years already. Hidden from "regular" people view, we also had to ascent 1250m to get its live proportion. We put the skis at 1200m and followed through the saddle (1400m) toward the summit. There were so many ski opportunities around and the lines from mt Brunswick are a good reason to come back in the future. Fairly easy slope (35-40 deg.) in the south gully was enjoyed by me and Stano in the noon Sun. Altogether 2000meters elev. gain in 8 hours.

Mt. Cayley. The way under the burning sun

Another mountain on another sunny day, but this time not without suffering. My burned lips keep the memories from last Saturday still fresh and so the pictures do. 2 of us started pretty late (9am) fairly low (+-700m) due to snow on the Brandywine fsr. The sun roasted our faces all around during 10 hours the trip took us. Sunscreen for sure helps, I just don't like when it enters my eyes while sweating. And I was sweating a lot :) I will skip all the up and down on the ridge/ glacier and as well the snowmobile thing... (we met around 20 of them and they were not bothering us) I was surprised how high we were able to skin up on the SE face of Cayley. But the tricky section was just behind the small saddle. Little exposed traverse (or a lot but not to steep:) then over small rock/snow step and we were again on top of (our) the world. I know, there are 2 small pinacles on each side, but I am not interested :) Altogether 25km, 10h, 2450m elev. And my lips...

Easter at Anniversary glacier

For the Easter hollyday Palo from Calgary came to visit us for the long weekend, so I wanted to show him something so he has an motivation to move to Vancouver already :-) I picked him up at the airport at 1 am, so didn't get much sleep that night. From the begin of his vacation he liked Vancouver very much and even by the night views he was so impressed :) We started really late from the parking lot (4pm) and going up the glacier was painful for me as I started to fall a sleep just before the col (around 8pm). Building a tent and cooking was another slow and painful procedure for me. The next day we wanted to start with Aussie couloir as warm up, doing Matier next and Spetch as last. Everything went well except for the Aussie. Snow condition were not that great and we were more than warmed up after skiing it :-D
I was surprised how many skiers came to enjoy the powder on Matier's NW face on Saturday. But it was definitely worth it. The ascent of mt. Spetch was the scariest of the day. We ascended the N side and skied the NW wich was also the best (steepest) of the day.
Second night was in the sign of almost no sleep. We didn't attach the tent properly and the wind started to blow pretty strong during the night. Nothing serious for the tent, we just couldn't sleep because of the noise. There were 5 of us in 3 person tent so that might have been a reason too :-)
On the last day we exited via mt. Slalok and its N face, which I can't put any words on :)
Monday was just relax. Up to mt Seymour we went and quick kayak ride in the afternoon. We were tired but happy. I was only sad to bring Palo back to airport.
Hope to see him soon :)

Only two of us- Castle towers

Last weekend was really special for me. I spent 3 days at Burton hut with my skiing/climbing partner (my wife). Leaving our 14months old boy with her parents for more than 1 day was big experience for everybody involved :)
Our plan was to hike to Burton hut the first day, climb Castle Towers on 2nd and do something funny on the last day. The weather was very supportive for the whole trip and only turning back 10 meters under the main summit of CT was little bit disappointing.
On Monday we climbed Deception peak. This was a nice 2.5h hike up and beautiful 20min downhill.
I always wonder myself, how alone you can be so close to the crowded areas like Neve traverse. We were the only ones skiing the slopes past the cabin but have seen a lot of people coming from Neve. Fog and snowing started as we approached the Barriere so we just did the 6.5km trail skiing to get to the car.

I can't name this again. But is worth few words.

It all began on Saturday morning with high avalanche danger all around and 50cm of fresh snow past 24h. So this was the plan: finding some tree skiing, bringing at least 2 friends with beacons and shovels and lets go. Hollyburn up on Cypress mt. To be honest, I was disappointed. Amount of people, snow quality and snow quantity overall was huge/poor :-) But there still was a Sunday, good weather and my wife joining me again in view. I was pretty sure that mt. Seymour with its slightly higher elevation and North facing slopes, avalanche danger drastically decreasing (moderate) will bring us more joy than the day before. So it was. Just few people enjoying beautiful weather and untracked terrain just for us. This was up to this day a highlight of the season on local mountains :-)
VIDEO HERE

Cayoosh mt. around the corner

This weekend I was expecting the best conditions this season. With 20cm of fresh snow, some snowy clouds and temperature around -7C what an disappointment. Everything was fine just those clouds didn't let us go higher up and made my eyes useless. On the open white slopes, I couldn't see anything. Stano said- you need real Goggles! so I'll give it a try next time.

Whistler out of (bounds) people.

With the promising temperatures (-12) and not sure about avalanche conditions (our condition) we went to Whistler once again. We didn't spent much time on the ski runs and tried little bit of the untracked terrain this resort is blocking. Up to this day the best skiing this season and to our surprise just few people around. Unfortunately due to high activity of my son at night, I didn't have the power to do more than 2 laps. Oskar was smiling also just on the way down :-)

Testing some stuff...

Yes we got a new car. The old one still waiting for a new owner, if anybody is interested :-) Of course I was keen to try it somewhere, somehow... Fresh snow up on Cypress gave me great opportunity to test the car and also my shovel.
VIDEO HERE