The best summer ever rolls incessantly onwards…much too fast. We’ve all been having way too much fun shredding bikes while enjoying the best weather I’ve ever experienced here…absolutely nullifying the void left by the absence of winter that culminates in the latent summer heat of August and the pesky density of awkward tourists. Now the return to school is menacingly close.

I’m fully back on the program after two down weeks at the end of July with a crippling sciatic nerve attack in my butt. Carlos is back riding regularly after stacking up some travel vacations. Willy continued his program up on the telepherique slaying slab lines pretty much every day and like me doesn’t need to go anywhere except for a good Les 2 Alpes session. It was good and dusty for a while but with sporadic thunderstorms we were spared the drought conditions elsewhere in France. The riding conditions just got better and better and nobody wanted to go to the beach.

Then we got an additional boost from the copacetic stoke of visiting new friends. Although I never knew them when they first arrived in Pemberton while I lived in Mt. Currie in the early 2000’s, Jon Johnson, Susan Medville and their son Jack showed up specifically to come ride Les Deux Alpes and La Grave. It just made sense that we all connected…Susan got my contact from Kirsty Exner, Jon ended up being ski partners with my old partner Trevor Hunt and Jack and Willy are on the same path of sending freeride lines.

Meanwhile Carlos was already set up to do at least one DH race this summer and the Kids Cup at Les Deux Alpes was the perfect scenario. We all have our different styles of enjoying the same passion and Carlos’ proclivity is precision and performance in the competitive arena. So after showing them around La Grave for a couple days we switched to Deux Alpes and one of the fastest bike parks there is.

The chainsaws were out on the same weekend as the legendary race in Les Gets and Carlos, despite having not ridden a ton and being the youngest in his age group, scored a podium… barely missing out on 2nd place and wiping out on the grass at the end of his second run that would have beat his first time (best of two runs).

At the same time Willy and Jack were up in the alpine, riding the Jandri and discovering more of the insane freeride terrain… so the next day we immersed ourselves in our own version of Rampage.

Adrien Loron and Hugo Frixtalon had the excavator going in another project along side Jack and Willy’s when Carlos and I arrived to help reshape something that I would have loved to put back a few glasses of whiskey before watching. Jack has already some heavy experience in digging and launching huge shit and Willy was on the same program.

In a hour or so and with the wind picking up, our collective shaping had dialed in an impressive 12m drop with a nice runout. I was impressed by the methodical, rational and precise approach of Willy and Jack. When the dig was deemed good, there was little hesitation and both of them hit it and landed on two wheels in the sweet spot. OMFG!

The memorable day was capped off by Jack, Susan and I riding the long long trail all the way down to Cuculet.

Another beautiful day in paradise, new friends to visit when we make it back to the BC coast and another summer vacation in the books. Thanks Universe.

180 something kilometers with a lot of climbing, it’s an impressive ride and whether Ricky Carapaz (who crushed everybody that day) or the others are on the latest greatest undetectable substances or not, it’s impressive how they charge that loop in about 5 hours. Besides doping controversies, it’s also undeniably a bunch of excessive commercialism and hoopla… but hey, everything shuts down for it and people are psyched so I’ve always figured I might as well go enjoy it. I also don’t give any fucks about the doping and I think they should openly allow riders to do anything (but hide motors in their frames) to win the stupid competition instead of doing it clandestinely anyways.

This year I had the idea of perching myself for a better view and a different angle on the race as it passes La Grave instead of seeing 30 seconds of it from La Grave’s packed main street. From my perch I could see all the way from the Col de Lautaret until they leave the village.

The leaders rolling through…

The peleton all stretched out on the descent…

Couple summers ago the tour ran from Briancon up and over the Lautaret and Galibier and my friend Ian Reid had the job of photographing the Italian motorcycle Carabinieri riding with the tour while in France (a unique occurence). So we rode our bikes up to the Lautaret to join the roadside crowds and watch the race up close.

In the end, no matter how you slice the Tour de France, it is what it is and it’s always a good excuse to party.

Summertime has come in hot this year…both the weather and the mountain bike action. It’s been so awesome to feel the heat after a rather cold end of spring and it’s set the mood for getting back into the routine in the forest on two wheels. Part of the stoke has definitely been the heat that’s been turned up by local Pemby shredder Finn Iles on the World Cup DH circuit. The boys and I sure enjoy race weekends and there’s been some dandys with Finn finally putting it all together for back to back victories in Leogang and Lenzerheide. Just amazing watching him ride in peak form on his new bike he helped develop after a few frustrating seasons. Inspiring top-shelf dude that even gave Carlos his race jersey after the race the other summer in Les Gets.

Everybody’s programmed to bitch about how hot it is (especially those that chose to live in urban heat islands) but it’s not even that hot… except that here in La Grave, the trails and riding are hotter than ever. The local young guns have been putting in their shaping touches here and there and Pascal and I built a new finish to the trail at the bottom that was obliterated by the Tabouchet avalanche a few years ago. To top it off, as usual there’s only a handfull of riders per day on the Telepherique in June taking advantage of our prettymuch private anti-bikepark. With zero advertising and no special early season ticket pricing, the SATG seems to continually rather have pretty much no clients in their newly extended season so as not to spoil their socialist government subvention handout for not making any money… from failing to actually make money and bring more people to our ‘ghost town’ periods.

It’s been a pleasure to ride with some of the few that are in the know and come to take advantage of our scenario. Like total ripper and instructor Thomas Escudier. We went for a few runs together the other day and despite being on a completely different level, his gentleman nature shone forth to tolerate my shitty riding and take a few pics. Tried out a new lens as well from Retropia…recycled lenses from old disposable film cameras inserted into modern camera body mounts that give an interesting vintage flavour to the images.

Carlos is still in prison (school) and finishing his 3eme brevets and hasn’t been riding as much but Willy has been out charging daily and sending rock slabs all over the place. The heat is good for grippy tires. I caught up with him and Pascal’s son Swan for a run…and then they were gone :-)

But it is warm for sure and when charging down the trails, it does get sweaty and it’s the time to take advantage of the rivers to electrify and rejuvenate in the cold glacial water. There‘s always a way to cool down if you know where to go…

The best part is, summer has just started. I’m looking forward to those Thursday afternoons after riding down at Bruno’s shop for cold beer and the open mike jam.

Happy Solstice.

For the first time in a long time I didn’t go skiing in May despite some great powder days to be had. I was just over it and worn out from an intense ski season that began in late November. Part of it of course are embraced responsibilities…as a papa, to take care of my boys and get back to work after the first winter season not guiding nor being a sponsored pro-rider for many years and… as an acolyte of the Kogi Mamos to do what’s right as a human and get busy in the gardens and grow as much food as possible again. Busy as a bee…

The other part of my reality that comes with the change of seasons is being a ‘bi-polar’ gravity freak…meaning the longing to get back on the mountain bike is unassailable. Fortunately, the stars aligned to take advantage of one of May’s long weekends and make a family road trip out to visit my buddy and crucial riding partner Kurt at his newly renovated house in the Côte du Rhone to start the season.

From there, a 20 minute drive to Nyons brought us to our delightful discovery of the Four Seasons bike park on the side of the mountain right above town. We hit the perfect weather, as it can be scorching hot there, to enjoy the well groomed super fun trails with practically nobody but us riding the perfectly tacky dirt.

I fucked up this shot of Willy launching a kind of gappy drop and so not getting him sunlit a split second later by forgetting to have put my camera on rapid fire…

And there’s always time to go bother some fish…

Les Deux Alpes has been open extra early this year and we’ve been hitting probably my favourite run in the world, Venosc, on the weekends. Spinning laps on that one sure gets you strong and that’s why the pros show up there as well for training. We had the good fortune of meeting one of the best there the other week… Benny ‘The Jet’ Coulanges who narrowly missed his second win in Loudenvielle last weekend by .127 seconds…

Karin is in bike mode too…in her own style. She’s gone on the road with her cousin Sophie to bike/camp from La Grave to Cannes. Awesome!

For me now it’s back to the best office in the world… getting the bike trails ready here in La Grave for the June 6th opening. Pascal and I shaped a new finish to the old trail destroyed by the Tabouchet avalanche right near the bottom so we’re going next level…as usual. Plus…thanks to Pascal and our partner Santa Cruz Bikes, I finally got a new bike…the dopest I’ve ever had, to replace the fragile stupid Canyon I broke the frame on which they refused to replace despite being under warranty.

My mood is finally fucking STOOOOOOOKE again!

But it’s spring and the Sun of God is rising again… powering the rebirth we witness as nature and humanity awaken and blossoms out of the slumber of winter. Like Prometheus, regrowing his liver (the seat of emotions) after getting it ripped out by Zeus’ eagle to punish him for helping the mortals, we’re on the up and up.

Maybe Sergio is our Heracles. The master entertainer put on yet another fine Derby de La Meije that lifted our spirits.

As a Papa, my pride and spirits were also lifted seeing Willy on the podium taking a 3rd place in the juniors, despite stopping for a rest on the way down.

There was awesome costumes as usual…

and the derby royalty showed up to reclaim their titles after a bunch of no derby years. Always great to see Seb Mayer, one of the strongest skiers I know.

The music was again top notch and I crawled back up the hill at 4:20 in the morning :-)

After that, the weather stayed warm and with a tired knee from a long season that started in late November, I was pretty much done with it…except for one last blast in Chamonix I saved myself for. It was the last FWT junior comp of the year for Willy and Carlos and it had been years since visiting a place that was like a second home in France. Carlos meanwhile was out for redemption. He’d made a lot of progress in his skiing this past season but had some unfortunate glitches during the comps that he entered and never had a result that mirrored his potential. This time was different…

The Cham comp had a unique format relative to the other comps and the day began with teams of two doing two derby style runs to qualify for the afternoon ‘linecatcher’ final.

Willy’s last minute partner had some bad crashes on the frozen morning crud and didn’t make it to the final but Carlos and his Serre Che Snow club partner Jacob totally crushed it coming in 6th overall and passing onto the finals.

The ‘linecatcher’ was a face beside the Bochard lift with prebuilt jumps. By the time that part of the event started, the snow had warmed perfectly and well…Carlos crushed it… flawlessly stomping a 360 off of every hit to take the U14 win for a well deserved finish to the season. More proud Papa!

It was awesome to visit Chamonix again. Les Grands Montets sure had changed since my first session there in ‘92. One thing that hadn’t changed much and continued the homey feeling was staying at my old friend Gary Bigham’s place a.k.a Vitamin Ski with him and his lady Anna.

For those unfamiliar with him, Gary is an ex-pat old school hot dogger that acquired his og farm house in Les Frasserands back in the day and never left. When I first met him in ‘92, he was just premiering his film ‘I’d Rather Be Skiing Than Happy With You’ and it remains as one of my favourite ski films to this day. Fortunately his daughter Guri started a project to digitise his library of films and they can be now enjoyed here…

https://www.thegarybighamarchive.com/

Chamonix is a special place…but it is a city despite it’s majestic position the mountains and Karin, Willy, Carlos and I were soon keen on returning to the tranquility of Ventelon and get our bikes ready for action. On the way back, the Charteuse was magically overflowing.

I haven’t touched the skis since. Preparing gardens and working on renovation projects at La Chaumine has been as fulfilling as anything. Fittingly, across the valley in plain sight I was left with a surviving souvenir of an idiosyncratic ski season and my last run in La Grave to reflect upon…

I don’t know if I’m a victim of suggestive programming or not. As a kid in school, I grew up with Shakespeare so I always knew the phrase ‘beware the ides of March’. Shakespeare or whoever he/she/they actually was/were ….was/were obviously rather clever and worldly and those works contained great wisdoms… but the dramatisation of an otherwise mundane Roman calendrical marker has now embedded Julius Ceasar’s prophesied demise in March as an inherent time of bad luck. Even Iron Maiden is guilty of instrumentally propagating it.

Whateverthefuck is behind it all, March has always been a weird month for me…maybe because of Shakespeare I might have ended up being my own harbinger of impending doom, betrayal and fate… or it could all just be pure coincidence. This March was no exception.

Typically, I finish my session guiding in Kyrgyzstan in the first or second week of and then return home completely exhausted. This year I was stoked to renounce my expertise and responsibility for other skiers and not go work in Kyrgyzstan. Three years ago I witnessed the most horrible accident I’ve ever seen on my way back to Bishkek…in mid-March.

I was sure stoked to begin the month seeing my crucial brother Chad Sayers. He comes to La Grave every year with his Extremely Canadian clients but usually I end up too tired to ski after Kyrgyzstan or missing him entirely. Even better was that at the same time, Forest Coots was here with his sister Hane. I’ve known Forest since the days of the Big Lepowski in Cham. It was wonderful to connect for a really sweet winter corn shred in early March’s soothing warmth.

Chad and I both share having lived through loss, tough times and arduous self-inflicted adventures. His empathy is profound and it’s always heartwarming to spend some time together.

Then the precipitation returned… and the ides began. Dooku, one of our beloved cats became sick. One of the most loving gentle creatures I’ve ever experienced shrivelled away before our eyes to the point where we decided to take her to the vet to put her down. No longer able to eat or drink she could barely move except to change places once in a while and cough horribly. On the way to the vet she gave us her final ‘geste’ of her sweetness and died in my lap 2 minutes before arriving.

I’d already suffered the traumatic loss of my cat Sam back in my childhood in Bolton, but this one hit way harder than I could have ever imagined. She was a part of our family for 10 magic years and Karin, Willy, Carlos and I were all devastated…in tears for days. Perhaps I was also still sad from losing my tree friend in front of the house that we had to cut down last fall. I don’t think I was still over my dad’s death a year and a half ago either. Regardless, it was hard to get motivated for skiing and I turned to focusing on finishing writing my book.

Fortunately, I had visitors to look forward to. Kirsty Exner, an ex-freeride World Tour competitor from Rossland came for a visit with her husband and two daughters. I knew of her for years as she was one of the top female freeskiers in Canada back in the day but we’d never crossed paths. What a pleasure to host them and take advantage of some fresh stable powder up on the telepherique. Her girls rip too!

The Tabouchet glacier was looking primo and so for our ‘big day’ out together, I rounded up my ski-partner Nasta to make the 1800m vertical trip up to the Refuge de L’Aigle as a power trio. We’d scored a perfect day and it was such a pleasure to be touring with two amazing stoked women skiers. I was ready to feel better again.

On the way up, I struggled like a sack of shit while the gals blazed on above me out of sight. Not having ski-crampons plus the weight of Cast bindings on my Wolverines, full glacier gear and rope, heavy ice climbing crampons (because I couldn’t find my light ones) plus camera, I fell way behind. Then I started feeling unusually nauseous and had a harder time breathing than normal with a tight chest. ‘I wasn’t that out of shape’ I thought to myself as I put my head down and hyperventilatingly kept going at the pace I could. A bit later, just as it finally seemed like I’d caught my second wind, my phone rang. It was Nasta and I initially thought ‘oh that’s nice she’s checking up on me’…but she had terrible news. The next 20 minutes I was in oblivion trying to get to the Aigle with the knowledge that our dear friend Benji had just died.

When I made it to the refuge, the tears began to fall and I learned that Benjamin Ribeyre had fallen to his death when his snow anchor had failed while lowering his client. They’d both fallen and somehow his client had survived without a major injury. I also learned that Nasta had felt the same nauseous tight chested feeling at the same time.

Our absolutely fantastic run down the Tabouchet was subdued glory.

It really hit home because I’ve had a history with the most dangerous part of skiing…setting snow anchors. I fucked up once…wanting to be back in the tents chilling and drinking aquavit in the bad weather instead of doing glacier skills with my clients in an icecave on a lonely Svalbard glacier. I’d set a piece of wood, something I’d done many times successfully rapelling into the void… but this time I was complacently hasty and fucked up. It popped and I accelerated blindly backwards from the roof of the ice cave towards the ground hitting 5m lower in a snow drift. The feeling was horrible considering the awful consequences if I had been in a slightly more exposed situation. Anger and disappointment in myself mixed unsettlingly with the embarrassment and horror that it had actually happened.

Benji’s fate was different because the situation where his anchor placement failed in was ‘real’. His accident hit me extra hard…not only because of my pre-existing state of emotional weakness but also because I could empathise with the horror he must have felt in the moments trying to hold his client he was lowering after his ski anchor failed and then being ripped down the mountain by the ruthless force of gravity. Having time to realise what had happened and what he was about to leave behind made it all the more tragic leaving behind his wife (my dear old friend Erin) and their son to continue on in their freshly finished house alone.

It snowed a bit again and I mustered the courage to go up and ski a top to bottom to try and pry my mind away from it all… but everything was still subdued. It wasn’t until the beautiful ceremony celebrating Benji’s life that I started feeling better. Fittingly the big tent set up for the upcoming Derby was already in place and accommodated the hundreds of people that came from all over the alps and beyond.

Thanks Benji…you showed alot of courage in your time sticking up for your principles and that will give the rest of us strength going forward. You were a leader…probably bound to be an even better one than Julius Ceasar. I never ended up skiing that much with him in recent years due to our naturally busy lives. I also saw him less after he and Erin moved from Les Terrasses over to their own house in Les Courses. Cosmically the last ‘run’ we skied together was the Tabouchet.

Ride on Benj, no worries eh because change is the only constant and we’re all eternal cosmic beings imprisoned by our own amnesia right?

We still haven’t made it through Janvril but riding season is coming soon!!!!

Atmospheric disturbance –
The feverish flux,
Of human interface
And interchange

The impulse is pure –
Sometimes our circuits get shorted,
By external interference

Signals get crossed –
And the balance distorted
By internal incoherence

A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a mood lifter
Everybody need reverse polarity

Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form.
Everybody got to deviate
From the norm

An ounce of perception –
A pound of obscure
Process information
At half speed

Pause:
Rewind – replay –
Warm memory chip
Random-sample –
Hold the one you need

Leave out the fiction
The fact is;
This friction
Will only be worn by persistence

Leave out conditions
Courageous convictions
Will drag the dream into existence

A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a soft filter
Everybody need reverse polarity

Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to elevate
From the norm…

Neil Peart

As we arrived at the lift, I’d heard someone saying that one of the guides on the commission had said that he couldn’t understand how the snow was still sticking to the mountain. Passing P1, the skiers who got on with us were all smiles after their first run and said it was super good. Further up we saw a big slough on the steep part of the lift line that a rider had released. I knew that I was responsible for Willy. We’d been shredding the trees already the last couple weeks with all the great snow and I didn’t have to worry about his skiing but today I was already thinking to keep us close to the lift line and especially… there was zero chance we were going to traverse over skiers left to under the face known as the Cote Fine.

Cote fine had been hanging there since the previous avalanche cycle on it’s persistent weak layer. I watched an unnervingly large release after a group of 2 skiers made some of the only tracks this year from the antenna entrance two weeks earlier. That was on the same day that a skier triggered the first big slab that ripped down the Freaux couloir. The FWT event was cancelled because it was sketch and perhaps because there had been local opposition to use explosives. As the waves of storm kept on hitting us and cumulated in a manner not seen for many years, I’d been waiting for the next natural cycle out of the Cote Fine now that there was already a hard avalanched bed surface for what was majorly reloaded warmer snow up there on the cold facets (including a wind direction change for the last pulses)… to rip bigger and even further.

When Willy and I arrived at the 2400 midstation there was chaos. The guy next to me stepped out of the cabin only to be physically pushed back in and they slammed the doors on us. ‘Huge avalanche from the Cote Fine with multiple burials’ they said and we we not allowed to exit the station. As we started our download, we still were not aware of any details like when exactly this had happened and if there was any rescue organised. We saw people still skiing who had previously come up and were still lingering outside the station so word must have arrived shortly before our arrival at 2400.

Willy and I got off lower down at P1 and had a great run down through the trees, still kind of bummed that this incident had happened and we couldn’t even get one full run in what was otherwise fantastic conditions. After climbing the stairs back up to the village we met Thomas, a local guide I’d known for many years. He was standing in his shoes in the parking lot. He asked me if I’d seen what had happened in the Chancel area this morning. Apparently the natural released avalanche carnage which he had seen from his house up in Les Terrasses was far more widespread than just the Cote Fine as I saw later that afternoon when it cleared…

Soon, the Gendarmerie and their dog crew arrived. The scenario wasn’t good and we started to learn why as skiers passed by and shared what they knew. My confusion turned to anger. I became upset that I had been blocked from leaving the station to help…something I’d been training myself and others for the last 36 years. I was also angry with myself for not knocking the guys at the lift to the ground and go anyways. It didn’t make sense that they weren’t taking advantage of all the equipped manpower that was being sent back down the lift.

The anger lasted a week…until I did enough interviews and research. I finally learned that given the timing of events, enough people were on the scene to perform the rescue and that the deceased were the first 2 to be dug up but were dead from the trauma of their violent trajectory, I wouldn’t have made any difference if I had disobeyed the lift staff. In the end, the tragedy was the guided group of 5 swept into the trees from a fat pocket releasing from above even before the main Cote Fine face. It was a miracle that the 3 others survived and that the other groups that were in the area had only close calls. I’m better now but a tempest of analysis and thinking has resulted from being very close to this ‘nightmare come true’ scenario for La Grave.

Personally, I think accidents begin when you get out of bed in the morning and in a ‘ski area’, there’s a lot of beds to get out of. This one however started when it began snowing in November. There’s a lot of food for thought and dismissing it all as hindsight without thoughtful analysis is wrong. I remember my awareness all along the winter so far because that’s what I try to do as a skier and I remember the discussions I had.

When the La Grave Freeride World Tour Challenger event was announced…to be held on the Cote Fine…the arctic high pressure was upon us and the thin snowpack on the face was already rotting out. I immediately commented that they should be up there with teams to ski cut it and knock down the facets. At the time the snow coverage was still too thin to enjoyably ski but for sure it would snow again. Then several weeks of faceting without any skier action created a situation of ongoing dubious stability. There was objection by some of the guides community to use explosives and I don’t know for sure if this influenced the final decision or not to cancel the event a week before it happened… right after there was a big avalanche on the Yret explosive controlled face that buried a competing snowboarder at the Serre Che comp. What would have happened onwards if they had bombed the Cote Fine and had the comp?

On Black Tuesday as I call it, there was another fatal avalanche also very close by in Valloire, but it was a pedestrian at the bottom of the valley. There, the head of safety at the ski area, Eric Viallet, was in disagreement with the Risk 4 hazard rating and called it 5 anyways to keep the ski area fully closed. If it had of been a 5, the commission in La Grave never would have gone up. As it happened, the thing that the commission always told the skiers when it was closed to the mid-station on great powder days in the tress (when many people toured up anyways) was exactly the ‘risk from above’ at the fringes of where gravity could take you from the lift...and when the heli can’t fly.

The La Grave safety commission has changed recently due to the childish political motivations of both the Mairie and SATA whereby the experienced local mountain guides that weren’t onboard with the 3rd phase of the gondola project, along with their spouses, were marginalised and ostracised from being part of the commission. The original older crew might not have collectively come to the same conclusions as the new one on that day… but that is pure conjecture.

Ironically the commission itself began in the last familiar storm cycle like this one in ‘89 because of an avalanche fatality only meters away…from the exact same scenario. I can understand that Eric the guide took his group out under the Cote Fine to the mellowest tree lines if his clients were not the best skiers instead of the less exposed but steeper trees. After all, the commission had been out there twice already and nothing had fallen on their heads. But that’s the danger we all face, guides included, when riding storms on the lift…thinking it’s all good just because the commission says it’s open.

We send out information too. The more elemental the better. That’s why I like prayer flags…although perhaps I romantically and naively trust what is written on them and therefore sent through the wind to the world… without the ability to actually read them and have some degree of copaceticness and therefore responsibilty to flapping their message about. I’d recently come across this comforting piece of writing…https://www.noemamag.com/the-conscious-universe/… which prompted my pre-existing personal view of the the material world as composed of consciousness to further interpret the ‘prayer flag’ effect. I pondered all this as I put up some new ones…

I live under a giant slowly peeling wave of rock and ice. Will I live long enough to get caught inside? Rock is a slow liquid and mountains were made to fall down but on their way to the shore, they sure make for some fun surfing.

Waves of snow from Atlantic swells have arrived in abundance and the powder smashing has been amazing and regular. The backyard is coated enough once again and Uncle Kurt is always stoked and has his priorities straight…

When I was a kid, the ultimate thing was for school to be closed because of snow. My boys live an hour bus ride from theirs that lies on the other side of the Col du Lautaret. Since they started going there, the winters have not been so severe and the Col closing has been rare. This winter however, has been different. Three days so far we’ve lucked out with the storm being severe enough to close the Col… but not the Telepherique. Willy and Carlos are now solid ski partners to hit first lift with and can fully charge the blower deep pow we’ve been blessed with. I brought the camera along for last Tuesday’s session with Willy and his buddy Swan Vallin. Fuck yeah no school!

Thanks Universe!

When I spent my first winter in Golden, B.C. in 2000, Pierre was already there shredding the Dogtooths, Rogers Pass and the Rockies. Him and D’arcy McRae were my first friends there. Our connection never faded and when I returned to Golden in the fall of 2004, we ended up living a few doors down the street from each other and continued a wonderful partnership in the mountains.

Pierre was a budding heli-pilot and so whenever he had his weeks off work he was back home and fully stoked, ready to climb and shred. He loved to climb ice, slog in on big approaches, ski the steeps and do winter camping adventures…and along with sharing musical tastes, worldviews and mountain sensibilities, all we had were good times.

Ice-climbing was always good mental, physical and skills training for getting after ski projects. One of the niftier climbs we ever did together (along with Jon Walsh of course) was French Reality…

Easy access off the Trans-Canada Highway hits were always a good call for day missions…like the classic Pope’s couloir…

Rogers Pass was also part of our highway access scenarios. We had a sweet full moon fungal enhanced Jupiter traverse one fine evening…

Skiing routes that had mandatory icefalls in them were a shared fetish. I wish I had pictures of all the crazy scenarios we ended up in pursuing that. One memorable endeavour stands out…the Cirque of the Unskiables. Just south of Saskatchewan Crossing on the west side of the Icefields Parkway is a magnificent cirque of 3 tasty couloirs, that require a good slog up to them from the parking spot. If you do make your way up underneath them you’ll then realize that all 3 have an icefall at the bottom making them ‘unskiable’.

Pierre and I tried and failed a couple times having to retreat in darkness from dealing with the ice climbing. I returned a third time with Cody Lank and we finally managed to ski the leftmost line from the top…

Eventually, Cody and Pierre returned years later to finish the job and nail the original main line.

Traipsing in far from the highway for more remote goodies brought rewards for such efforts. The Ice River is a good ways back there in Yoho National Park and on a glorious mission with the most foot pain I’ve ever had, Pierre, Aaron Enns and I were able to ski the west face of the South Goodsir from well up high…

Pierre of course got busier and busier in his profession as a heli-pilot and I of course moved away to La Grave, but near the end of our era togther we did have a last hurrah.

On a last minute opportunity to hop in a pick-up flight out to the Clemenceau Glacier we availed ourselves to a 17 day Clemenceau-Colombia ski safari. We were packed for 10 days but when we landed, Johnny Sims and his clients left us another 7 days of supplies. People usually do this traverse back to the Icefields Parkway in 3 days (I’d done that several years previously as well) and end up walking by a lot of goodies. Needless to say we got in a bunch of skiing doing the extended version and scored a plethora of first descents.

Our prize had to be the premiere of Mt King Edward via it’s beautiful South East Face.

That second part of the trip saw the later stages of April turn spring-like up on the high glaciers which turned out perfect for not only Edward but also for the direct line on the South Face of Mt Colombia.

Pierre made it over for my wedding in 2009 and we haven’t been able to reconnect in person since. I know he’s flying high somewhere over the mountains he loves so much.

Thanks Pierre.

With another week of cold with no snow coming up and limited skiing that was getting firmer and firmer up on the telepherique, I immediately began a search on ‘Le Bon Coin’ for a used pair to absolve the sacrilege of my heinous deficiency. I found a sweet pair of CCMs and in a few days they arrived and off we went…’backcountry’ skating. With our sharp edges we laid some sweet fresh tracks…and while giggling and twirling about we forgot about skiing.

Chris is good buddies and climbing partners with the one and only Fred Beckey… and Fred was on a mission with one of his other old partners up to the Monarch Icecap to do a summer climb of Mt Cerberus. He invited Chris to come along and share the heli-access expense. Kettles immediately thought of skiing and so was rousting me to come along, partner up and give a go at the still un-skied coastal giant known as Mt Monarch.

It was July but there still could be enough snow left on the west face to ski the 3555 meter peak that I wasn’t able to back in March of 1997. Troy Jungen, Matty Shred, Carl Skoog and I has given it a go to begin our Monarch Icecap Traverse. We’d kind of tried on both sides of it, first retreating on the ratty NE line from above 3000m to ski down the North Horseshoe Glacier to our Success Lake camp. It was friggin’ cold!

photo: Carl Skoog

Then we hauled our shit all the way around and up the Talchako Glacier and then going light up the majestic Empire Way glacier, we scoped out the more shreddable West Face on another day mission. The potential ski route was there as well as some well defined sasquatch tracks at the Empire Way/Page Glacier col. Attacking the face however wouldn’t be possible…we had to commit to the rest of the mighty traverse to get the fuck out of there and back to Hagensburg.

In the years in between, the only other attempt to ski Mt Monarch I’d heard of was Johnny Foon, Eric Pehota nd Dave Gauley heli-ing into the Horseshoe Glacier zone to give the north side a try…but it didn’t work out because of icy conditions. Monarch sits at the very east of the coast range, butted up to the high Chilcotin Plateau. It actually has a Rockies feel to it…especially down in the pine forests around Success Lakes. It’s not classic coastal conditions there and a north side attempt would more merit a try in May.

I’d climbed with Fred a few times and it was a pleasure to finally do an expedition kind of thing with him. With his trusted climbing friends and partners, he’d always shared a wealth of knowledge on the ‘unclimbed’ from his Black book. His intended line on Cerberus was one of them. He also knew that Monarch had still yet to be skied and so we took the nudge from ‘the Wizard’ to unhesitatingly pack up Chris’ truck and blaze up to Hagensburg airport to meet him.

Legendary local helicopter pilot Richard Lapointe ended up taking two loads out to our little basecamp on on a rock island at the south end of the main icecap because Freds team had 3. I forget now what exactly happened but the third guy retreated back to the airport on the return of the second load so we ended up just 4 total.

From there we could see the majestic west face of Monarch way down the Talchako Glacier and Cerberus right in front of us in the opposite direction. Cerberus was also un-skied at the time and it was tempting to go for that alongside Fred… but Monarch was the prize and my arch nemesis.

The already 80 something year old Fred sure had an ‘old school’ way about him in the mountains. He was legendary for it and was undoubtedly why he had such an incredible comfort level in what most would call inhospitable places. It was just what he did in continuity all his life.

After a little warm up ski close by, Chris and I set out for our proposed route up the Page Glacier. The long mellow descent off the Icefield continued slightly down the Talchako glacier with my expeditions sled trailing behind as we weaved through sandy suncup formations until re-climbing up to the white snowpack and setting camp at the Page/Empire Way col.

The weather was holding perfectly for us and the next morning we started with the sun up the lower right face with a long July day in front of us. The glacier was just too broken and snowless to navigate on the lower left. The twin couloirs in between were no longer connected top to bottom with snow and were not an option.

We ended up scrambling a little ways and ended up with one class 5 move we protected which was super fun with ski boots. I put in a pin to belay Chris and for rappelling off afterwards. Above, the buttress that we’d gained put us directly below the upper face and it’s choked exit.

The day was warm but not too warm and there was no wind. Climbing was perfect but as we neared the summit ridge and gained the mountain’s full prominence into the deep blue sky, the surface got firmer and colder… yet still soft enough. We realized our good fortune as on the very ridgetop we felt the harsh cold north prevailing wind we’d been sheltered from on our side of the mountain.

What an incredible summit ridge line we made it to the top of… but we weren’t technically on the summit. There was a traverse to a 10meter un-skiable rock step to the true summit. As we hunkered a few meters below our high point to eat and drink, we decided that with the lower mountain heating up and risking to be in shadow again, it would be better to make haste and simply begin skiing from the top of ‘the ski line’ where we were…that was only a few meters lower.

Chris and I swapped pitches off the top. I took stills and Chris filmed with a mini dv camera as we skied along side super loud crystal slough. The crunchier top turns became smoother and smoother as we descended until we were in full steep corn glory in the choke.

There was a big horizontal wave to ride above the twin couloirs leading tho the buttress rappel that was particularly memorable. After the rappel and down climb the big open turns on the Empire Way brought us back to camp in evening colours just as the snow started getting crunchy again.

For sure this west side can be skied ‘integral’ i.e. top to bottom, without down climbing or rappel either via the twin couloirs and theoretically the hanging broken glacier… which someone just has to go back and get when the stars align again.

We chilled that night and in the morning at our remote/remote camp, the wind and clouds chased us away. The summit of Monarch was no longer visible and it was time to make haste back to the rock island and not get whited-out on the icecap. Fortunately it was warm and the cloud base remained quite high.

Good times were had when we returned as Fred and his partner had pulled off their mission too. We all celebrated together with our stash of booze and weed having conquered another useless but cool thing in the remote BC wilderness… and made sure to radio Richard to come pick us up when he could.

The next morning we were in the hot sun but the clouds were burgeoning from the west and north to where we had to go back to. Richard made it up at mid-day no problem but interestingly, his formula was now to bring us down in one load. So we stuffed his A-star to the max, somehow fitting all of us and our gear before he then proceeded to show us his legendariness.

He’d strategically landed on the northern edge of a snow dome, a minute’s walk from our ‘island’. Then when the classic take off predictably failed due to too much altitude, heat and load even for his powerful B3… he nudged the heli forward with a full collective until it started sliding downhill on the skids and we’d gained enough airspeed and thus enough lift to skim a few meters above the surface of the glacier and keep getting more speed. After a nervous minute his technique had blown our minds and we were all good and flying back into the rain down in the Bella Coola valley.

Sure glad I got to have an adventure with Fred. For Chris and I, it was a big feather in the cap of our mountain partnership which had just made a full circle from our common coastal origins together in the golden years in Whistler. Monarch meant alot. There’s not much more beautiful places in the world than the B.C. Coast Range and it’s an absolute apriori, as is my friendship with Chris, in my personal inspiration to dance on high peaks.

At the Zakopane station, Peter’s buddy Szymon was waiting for me. Younger than he sounded on the phone, he welcomed me and asked if I wanted to go straight to the apartment he had organised for me or go have some tea with his friends. Tea sounded good so we loaded his hi-lux and set off through town. When Szymon pressed play on his stereo, I was totally not expecting to hear Entre Nous by Rush. It made my hairs stand up…and feel at ease at the same time. I was supposed to be there.

At tea in a small wooden cabin of a back lot, Szymon’s friends felt like people I had already known for years and we had some greta conversations. One of them Piotr, a local ski instructor who was also a local tour guide, gave a me pro guided session of town the next morning. After hitting the cafe/bakery underneath my apartment and then the little fresh veg and stuff shop for breakfast gear, Piotr and I walked through the older bits of town. He overflowed my head with precise dates and names of Zakopane’s intriguing history. My eyes were filled with the local highlander building and woodworking traditions.

A lot of the crucial stories of mountaineering, arts, religion and politics are symbolically intertwined in the old cemetery as well.

The artistic legacy that had been sheltered by the more liberal Austro-Hungarian occupation from Bolshevik repression in other parts of Poland still thrives in Zakopane’s numerous art galleries.

But wtf, it was supposed to be yucky all day. As I reconnected with Szymon for lunch, the sun was peeking out of the parting clouds and we figured we’d better carpe skiem. So we geared up and headed to the telepherique for the last ride up to go check the conditions.

It was a beautiful afternoon and from the high ridge the lift accessed at Kasprowy Wierch, we could see alot of the Tatra massif, most of which is actually in Slovakia. The mellower western Tatras looked like they had received more snow than their more jagged granitic counterparts to the east. I’d made it to my goal with my skis and the nice light and warm temps added in making a very nice ski run dancing between rocks and bushes all the way to the valley bottom and the edge of town for soup and beers.

Szymon lived right across the street from the ski jumps which apart from the new generation of Himalayan ski legends, comprises the bulk of Poland’s ski legacy. I unfortunately didn’t get to see any action while I was there but I witnessed the grooming of the landing slope done by people on skis towed up and lowered down by a winch cable.

The next day was the predicted weather window and Szymon organised us to go back up the lift with his pro snowboarder buddy Kuba. He’d been riding a bunch already and had a decent plan for us to hook up multiple couloirs that he knew had enough snow in them. We totally scored with a beautiful sunny day!

Looking back down on Zakopane…

We followed the ridgline over some small rocky summits for about an hour until we arrived at our first couloir. It looked more filled in than anything else and the variable snow ended up being fun to ski.

Our next couloir started at a bit lower altitude and didn’t get the same snow coverage which made for some rather technical skiing that freaked out the climbers coming up it. The third couloir envisaged involved a very long approach with very little snow on it so we decided to descend to the refuge below for apple cake and beer. Good thing we did as by the time we made it to the valley on a partly snowless forest trail, it was dark. After another celebratory soup and beer session we were toast and I was super stoked to have done some real skiing in these beautiful and natural mountains.

The next morning it was already raining…perfect to have a last chill day to see the rest of Zakopane. Szymon took me to another art gallery where I learned more about the legendary freakazoid artist Stanislaw Witkiewitz who labeled his portraits with a code to indicate what drugs and/or alcohol he was on while doing the painting.

The main museum was pretty nice too.

This brief but awesome visit has inspired me to return to not only reconnect with the crucial folks I met and ski some more of the sweet terrain I saw but also for the biking and bears in the summertime. Dziekuje Tatra!

I can honestly say that Peter C aka Peter Peru, is my godfather of skiing. When I first arrived in Whistler in ‘88, he took me on my first real ’backcountry’ powder run somewhere down Crystal Ridge that blew my mind. Besides introducing me to his Extreme Explorations world including the burgeoning legends of Trevor Petersen and Eric Pehota, he also inspired me with his persistance in making the historic first ski descent of Mt Robson, aka Yuh-hai-has-kun, down the Kain Route. Since that golden age in Whistler, Peter and I have had numerous adventures together including our epic visit to the Kogis in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in 1999, but I hadn’t seen him since my mom passed away in whistler in 2017. Needless to say it was great to reconnect and spend some time together. Except for some significant wear and tear on his body, Peter has hardly changed.

The highlight of the festival was of course the appearance of Andrzej Bargiel for primetime centre stage on Saturday night. His incredible descents of K2 and now Everest in powder with no oxygen have made the Zakopane local a national hero.

WTF is that guy on the left doing making masonic/illuminati hand signs? He kept it up for a while. Anyways, there’s a huge tradition of amazing Himalayan alpinism in Poland and especially in his Zakopane roots so of course during his talk, the subject of Kammerlander’s “Red Bull circus” comments were brought up. Big Money sponsors doing kooky things is nothing new (as with the NatGeo/TNF headlines spewing forth about Jim Morrison’s ski down ‘the’ north face)…and in this case, a few specifics that I was privy to and will keep to myself, might explain some of the angst from the crusty old Tirolean hardman. Andrzej however, exemplifies grace under pressure and as such he responded by saying that Kammerlander et al. are his big inspirations and he wouldn’t be doing his thing without their lead.

There’s all kinds of ways to slice up anybody’s accomplishments depending on all kinds of shit including one’s mood and personal ethics and experiences. I say Andrzej’s runs are all time and whatever went into making them happen in the style he did them in, especially to be shared with such well done dronematography, was worth it.

Yes, style matters…only because you have to live with how you do something after the fact. The Robson film added fuel to fire up that very topic with the judges at the festival. It played on the big screen early Sunday afternoon and catalysed our panel discussion on the concept of style along with a few other topics on stage afterwards. Joining Peter C and I was a young Polish filmmaker Julia Fraczek along with the contemporary antithesis to Mr. Bargiel, Bartek Ziemski.

Bartek deservedly had his own talk on the main stage just before the Robson showing. Much less sponsored than Andrzej, he’s already crushed 6 8000m peaks (Broad Peak, G2, Annapurna, Makalu) on skis including premiere descents of Kajenjunga and Dhauligiri… all also without supplemental oxygen. As a software engineer, he’s been doing it all on his own dosh with his partner Oswald Rodrigo Perreira, with support from the Polish Climbing Association and modest gear sponsorship. No production costs and no Everest fees…yet.

It was awesome to see ‘Robson’ on the big screen and it was impressive in all it’s attributes. It was also honest in that Lusti was forthwith about heli-ing up to the dome to get in position to do their second top to bottom run. Oswald, who was moderating/leading the discussion asked me directly if that made a difference as this was the thing that prompted comment by the judges. My response obviously had to be yes because they could have slogged in with their camp gear to do the same thing and then had to deal with retrieving it or doing the descent with it. Despite the summit ski being grandiose, I said that their first run was ‘the real deal’ and more significant because of it’s autonomy, engagement and cleanness…despite the lack of a summit ski. Maybe I would have done the same given having the means/budget to do so? Impossible to say. All I remember is the pain of walking back from Berg Lake with everything on my back, distorting my physical limits after skiing the North Face. Lusti and Gee had heli support but personally in my view, it doesn’t really tarnish their achievements.

In the end, ‘Robson’ deservedly won Best Adventure/Exploration film and Peter took the stage to accept the prize on behalf of Phillip Forsey and crew…

With the festival over, Peter and I spent the day together in his birthplace of Krakow. Santa’s still going strong in one of Europe’s ‘safest’ cities…

Looking back at the ICE where the festival was held…

Plenty of churches and tourists in the historic walled city that lay on a major east-west trade route…

Peter and I had lunch on the main square where his grandma used to take him as a child. We got our fill of reminiscing and as the short winter day faded into darkness, it was time to turn our gazes forwards and move on back to the mountains. Enough talk, let’s ski!

To be continued…

1997 had been a stellar year…from skiing Mt Loki’s north face at the beginning of the winter, to the Beartooths, to surviving a traverse of the Monarch Icecap, to injury, to skiing the Grand and the plethora of shredding in between. After a sweet summer back in Whistler, the September freshness rousted me right back to thoughts of ski adventures….and the potential in the Rockies where I hadn’t set foot since skiing Robson.

Jon Walsh aka Johnny Red and I had become climbing partners and we also had started skiing more together while both basing out of Nelson that past winter. We were also both thinking of what else had yet to be skied and Mt Forbes literally and figuratively stuck out like a sore thumb. Rumour had it that the highest peak in Banff National park at 3612m, while having a visible prominence, was at the same time isolated enough from the Icefields Parkway to have kept it from having been skied thus far.

A non-stopper in Johnny’s van from the coast fueled by Frank Zappa put us at the trailhead outside of Saskatchewan Crossing to take advantage of a high pressure weather window. From the highway, the summit of Forbes is just visible but it’s glaciated tasty looking northwest face needs some effort to gain a vantage point. It wasn’t until the next evening that we were on the outskirts of it’s north glacier after finishing the gruelling 18km hike with loaded packs and replete with river crossings that we could spot our prize.

The next day we stuck to the plan of non-stoppingess especially with a splitter day before us and rousted our already sore selves to get the last 1000 meters done.

It was some good slow going drudgery for both of us by the time we reached the summit later in the afternoon but our timing couldn’t have made the ski any more nicer in the beautifully illuminated and warmed snow.

It wasn’t the greatest skiing on the roughly textured and variable surface but good enough to have put our line straight up and down the middle of the face without too much haggles from the open crevasses. Jon never took any ski pictures and I probably did, but those are lost to the wilds as on the way back to the car, I left my old Zeiss Ikon sitting at one of our rest spots. By the time I’d realized it was missing, we were back at the van and totally spent. Oh well, it was time for a new camera anyways!

Great adventure with Jon to sign our names on another Rockies Classic ski premiere in September that pushed our fitness limits and inspired us for some more epics together in the years to follow.

yeeee doggies!

I’d been in Telluride for a month… recuperating from having hit a tree while doing a ‘Wedge in a day’ with Troy back in Whistler. I was lucky to not have been much more crippled, but my very sore knee ensured that I’d be missing out on finishing off another stellar winter by finally returning to Alaska with my crucial partner. So my Colorado mission had been basically to get to know T.R. Youngstrom, a young A-list photographer, for a future adventure while rehabbing my knee in the San Juan springtime.

My secondary motive of a Leadville mission to reconnect with a captivating girl I’d met in Salt Lake some months earlier at the winter OR show was a complete disaster. Fortunately, Telluride and the great friends there were a comforting consolation. I could totally stay at JP’s place while he and Rob ‘The Poacher’ (my Telluride/La Grave connection) introduced me to the local scene. During those weeks there, besides making new friends like Suzy Chaffee and Brian and Hillary O’Neil, I’d participated in the first Ute ceremony (a sweat lodge) in the valley in over a hundred years, my leg got better and I managed to get back on skis with a sweet Ophir to Telluride tour on the remaining late May snow.

The good times and the funky community continued to grow on me but it felt like it was time for me to ramble on. I’d organized a flight back to Vancouver from Salt Lake City in a couple days and so I called my friend Kristen Ulmer who lived there if I could crash at her place en route to the airport. Normally, it would be no problem but… she was leaving the next afternoon for Jackson Hole to go try to become the first female to ski the Grand Teton…and she was going with Tom Jungst…and why don’t I come along?

First of all, I already had a tough choice to make. That evening Suzy was trying to set me up on a date with this very hot Ute ‘princess’ at some film premiere AND it was also Rasta Stevie’s annual spring party down on the river which was a no-miss kind of thing. Connecting with Kristen would mean leaving those enticing options immediately and risk not even making the rendezvous for her tight schedule having no other option but to hitchhike there. I also didn’t know if my knee was ready for that kind of mission.

As fate would have it, I decided to go for the ski mission with Kristen. It was too serendipitous not to. So I set out in the late afternoon, caught a few rides and bivouacked out in the desert. It went slow the next morning and I was super nervous that I wouldn’t make our arranged rendezvous just after lunch…even as I sat anxiously in the miracle ride from a kindly old lady that brought me right to Kristen’s house from a hundred miles away. It was still pre cell phone days. But there she was waiting for me in the driveway and we immediately threw in my gear and headed north to Jackson. Seemed like this was meant to be.

It was great to reconnect with Kristen who was at the peak of her game in terms of hardcore ski adventuring. At the time she was boosting the possible in the realm of female ski-mountaineering and was fully sponsored etc. So when we arrived at the brew pub for dinner, we not only met Tom but also Bozeman hardman and budding North Face photographer Kris Ericson and Legendary Nat Geo photographer Gordon Wiltse who would also be coming along to document Kristen’s potentially historic descent.

Skiing ‘The Grand’ was of course on every serious skier’s bucket list and Jackson Hole wasn’t unfamiliar to me at all. I’d done several sessions there lurking and poaching the goods with my buddies in the Jackson Hole Air Force. So I was rather tickled to be finally hiking the trail in the park with the iconic summit looming above.

Turns out there was one more surprise member of the crew…local guide and legend Mark Newcomb. Together with Kris, they’d support Gordon to climb the classic Owen-Spalding route where he could shoot across and capture the descent.

On our ascent the next morning, I’d freesoloed the Chevy Couloir on our Ford-Stetner route so that Tom could belay Kristen as they climbed as a rope team in hopes of expediting things but we were still late on our beautiful summit. Mark climbed to the summit to meet us as Kris and Gordon waited in position. Mark made it clear that it wasn’t ideal skiing conditions and that he personally wouldn’t do it. He’d skied a couple of versions of ‘The Grand’ already and wasn’t there to ‘do it’ like we were.

The clouds were obviously building and it was warm but needless to say we dropped in anyway. The skiing in spring conditions was excellent off the top and Gordon got his shots. He got one of me too…

As we descended into the meat of the Ford couloir, the top layer was easily sliding off and so while Kristin and Tom took pictures, I went ahead and kept ski-cutting and getting rid of all the loose wet snow on the top layers. I wasn’t skiing my strongest as my knee wasn’t totally healed yet but it was good enough and the turns on the underlayer were very nice.

As we descended, so did the clouds… and we were committed.

At the end of the Ford couloir, we regrouped on the rocky point to begin the rappels down the Chevy Couloir. It began to rain and so did the natural avalanches from all the loose snow that remained above. There was nothing to do but sit and wait. Fortunately it was predictable that the monster sloughs that could wipe us off the mountains while rappelling would ultimately stop because I’d cut out a lot of the surface snow while descending. When the slides finally ceased we nervously got through our rappels soaking wet but without any more avalanches and then skied the Stetner Couloir joyfully back to camp.

Kristen had made the historic first female descent despite the flack she got from the jealous locals. She had help and we sure hadn’t nailed the conditions despite the quality skiing, but it was legit. I was stoked too. I didn’t have a Ute girlfriend nor a nasty hangover but my gamble had paid off in going for ‘The Grand’, my knee was all good and I had made a new friend in Kris Ericson for some crucial adventures in the fabulous years to come. Yeeeee doggies.

In preparation for our Monarch Icecap traverse we had planned for that March, Troy, Matty Shred and I roadtripped down to visit our buddy and Bozeman local guru Tom Jungst in Febuary to test our new North Face gear and military grade expedition sleds in the Beartooth Wildeness. The border guys couldn’t find our weed we had stashed so… great success!

Man was it ever cold… solid minus 20 daytime temps which was exactly the preparatory conditions we were looking for. Fortuitously, we nailed the conditions and the snow was stable cold smoke on every aspect. Tom knew the zone and we skied several huge premiere descents in full crucialness.

Skiing with the Dana Designs mega fanny prototype…

Tom had wealth of experience and knowledge to help us further dial in our basecamp scenario but he wasn’t expecting these young hairless Sasquatches to be seriously lurking with the legendary drum named Dumbek (at centre in the pic below). It was a free drum that just did it’s own thing and joined many people on their adventures. I’d skied Mt Blanc North Face with it on my back in ‘94.

Sunday mornings Nurbek returns and it all starts up again at lunch when the new group arrives. The contrast, crucial in all aspects of life, refreshes the appreciation for the best part of my amazing experiences…the other riders. Everybody has something to add or share from the stoke of their own experience but there for sure have been some notably memorable groups of dedicated skiers, old friends and pro-riders that have showed up over the years.

Statistically, we mostly had guys as our clients and it nearly always made a positive impact on the week having one or more females in the mix. One exceptional week we had a full women’s group. My old friend and ACMG ski guide Kitt Redhead showed up with photographer Zoya Lynch, pro-rider and writer Molly Baker and yoga wizard Ally Bogard. The yurts are perfect for hot yoga after a day of shredding powder…

We’ve also had several film crews and ski brands over the years. A great week that combined amazing skiers with good conditions was when we hosted the Faction Skis crew . Etienne Merrel was along as their cinematographer to capture Laurent Gauthier and Arnaud Rougier laying down some sweet lines and some stylee freestyle. When I’m guiding regular clients, I‘m not always in a good photo position but with a film crew, I’m often with the cameraman who is of course looking for a good angle. Otherwise my strategic safety position can put me somewhere I normally wouldn’t be and so on this week I ended up capturing some OK shots.

We also hosted Stephan Drake and the DPS crew. I tried their skis but I liked my Wolverines way better. They scored a sweet Yahtzee couloir which isn’t always possible.

We even had a week with Jack Wolfskin…more lifestyle that shredding. Ryan had the right look and he was used as one of the models.

One of the best weeks ever was when the Pogo crew along with my good friends from La Grave, Joost and Kurt crushed the exceptional ‘green light’ conditions. It snowed as they arrived and then we could proceed to ride anything we could get to…

I also had the pleasure of befriending Konrad Bartelski on his week with us. Probably still the most successful world cup downhill racer England ever had, he came from the era of Franz Klammer and the crazy Canucks Steve Podborski and Ken Read. He sure still knows how to ski but now it’s all about travel adventure and powder. To be continued…

Well, Carlos is gone on a school trip to Catalonia so it was up to Willy to take advantage of a sunny weekend on our sunny side of the valley. The snow hasn’t stuck yet and it unfreezes during the day. The riding is still good!