Lazy Boy Ski Touring
December 2021, the Coast Mountains were lucky enough to have an Arctic outflow merge with a Pacific storm, which brought some amazing powder. With it still be a pandemic, we kept our objectives manageable. Lazy boy is the ridgeline to the left of the picture below (barely in the picture). Cayoosh mountain in the foreground
This isn't the first time I've skied -18C weather and certainly won't be the last. The extreme cold made for some stable avalanche conditions.
The cold also does a number to electronics. Keeping batteries close to your body is vital to ensure equipment still functions. My camera shut off near the beginning because it wasn't close enough to my body (outside of shell).
Even with the stable conditions, there's always the need to stay vigilant. Alpine weather can have extreme localized effects. On our way up we saw a few fresh size 1 loose dry avalanches that were likely point releases from steep aspects. My guess would be wind loading.
As we got into the alpine, it became more apparent there was plenty of wind recently. A 10cm crusty wind slab formed on all aspects we tested. The slabs did not propagate. In the image above you can clearly see some massive cornices forming at the top of the ridge.
In the end, we got to ski some pretty cool alpine terrain. The bottom is a list of things I did and things I wished I did that made/would make skiing and photography in the cold more bearable.
This is the list of things I would deliberately make sure I pack for cold outings:
- Hot miso soup
- heat packs
- 2 puffys, 1 shell, 1 toque,
- 2 gloves (outer shell mitt, inner liner mitten, light full finger glove)
- separate camera body and battery
- wide mouth water bottle filled with warm/hot water
- neck buff to cover mouth when breathing in