Freaking Trip - May 15-18, 2009

Freaking Trip - May 15-18, 2009
Part 1

A freaking trip to the land of the freaking lines.

After seeing Lucky’s Freaking Lines TR a few years ago and speaking to him, this trip was definitely in the cards.

Long weekend in May coming up. Lucky got the ball rolling, lining up his skiing buddies. :mrgreen:

Pete The Pete from Trois-Rivières, buddy on his last two expeditions to Terrace.

Éric from Laval, skiing friend dating back from High School and partner to last season trips to MSA, Sunday, Bush and Tuck.

Madpat from Ottawa, ski team days, powder days or late season trips.

“ALL IN” for this trip.

There are no fancy amenities on trips like these. It’s all about the skiing and you need to work hard, drive long hours, hike, skin and even bushwhack to get the freaking lines.

There are a few things that sucked during this trip.

The skiing (being in the East :lol: ), the views, the weather, the parties, the beer, the food, the lack of sleep, the gnarly steeps, the locals, the company, the moose shit, the bushwhacking from hell, camping in the rain or sleeping in a tent below freezing and the company... it was great!!!

Lucky, where do we sign up for next year’s trip???

:worthless:

(PS - Lucky, I'm working on the pics...wait until I'm done before posting any).

FRIDAY:

After a long drive in a powerful windstorm, at 1am we crashed into what seemed to be the only open Motel in this sleepy coastal town. It was pricey for out-of-season, even if the guy behind the counter said he gave us a deal.

Woke out at 6:30 am, eat breakfast in the room after finding out that even at that price, the breakfast wasn’t included. I guess that is why it was called the Monaco.

Looking at the forecast and TV for the last time. A great deal of rain had fallen overnight, the wind was still blowing hard. Temps outside was around 4c, so it would definitely be colder in the mountains. The forecast temps around +8c with cloud cover, not a great prospect for a great day.

So we drive, look around and get to the end of this old road. This is where we see the lines that Lucky has in mind. We noticed a few lines to choose from, but Lucky has the “Couloir en S” in mind. Man, pretty cold for mid-May, clouds, I decide to put on my winter pants, what are the surfaces going to be like? Are they going to soften up? 8-[










We start off at 9:30am and we try to find a way to get to the bottom of the Bowl, first we need to negotiate around a stream and then we put on the skis and skin through the forest.

It's not Tuckerman. At the bottom of the bowl, we are alone. I start bootpacking while Lucky is still skinning higher. I start eating before the climbing in the couloir, Lucky starts off right away. The route that were eyeing has definitely a tight choke. After seeing that Lucky isn’t coming down, I start my own climb, the sun is coming out and I realized that I didn’t put any sunscreen. The surface is soft, but get a bit thin crust of ice toward the top.

Lucky eat on the plateau on top, the wind is blowing hard. Great views of the surrounding. From up high, we notice a second car is park next to us.

Luc is the first one down, ice crust particles fly uphill in hit me in the fact while I’m taking pictures. This is a long steep descent, the snow is great. We waited for each other before turning towards the choke. As we get to the bottom, we see someone else at the bottom of the bowl.

lookin good so far patrick! keep em comin. looks like north facing blanche la montagna (sp?) couloirs to me. parc de la g? m-mines? seems like i've seen that spot from mont a. parking lot bowl, yet i'm probably like 1000km and the wrong side of the big river, no? i'm heading back up to big george tomorrow night for tuesday. valley temps in the 20's tomorrow night, tuesday-62 degrees/sun/light winds \/ such amazing supportive all day corn here from late march through june.

more pics?

rog

Vincent is at his first visit here. He rented the AT equipment in Montreal and was only passing through. He wanted to hire a guide, however the guide wasn’t available, so he showed up alone. We brought him around on a second climb. We choose to climb a different couloir. At one point, Lucky asks him if he’s okay with the steep terrain. The couloir didn’t go as high and the snow was iffy in around bushes near the top. We continued along the ridge back to the same spot as top of the couloir we did on our first run.

As we headed toward that spot, Vincent and I noticed a small caribou bone with very little meat left on it. Lucky never noticed, we was just climbing too fast.

Second, still great. Vincent and Lucky climb part of the other couloir, I decide to rest up. I was amazed that I was actually here after being sick earlier in the week. I was just happy.

We skied down through the woods all the way to the road. Opened a few beers and savored our day.
















TO BE CONTINUED...(BEFORE MIDWEEK). :dead horse:

icelanticskier":237wy5a2 said:

looks like north facing blanche la montagna (sp?) couloirs to me.

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Close, but no cigar. North facing is right.

icelanticskier":237wy5a2 said:

more pics?

Click to expand...

Oh yeah, this was only day 1.

The following day we added a few partners with an extra camera. Hard to choose which pics to use. :-k

Did you outsource the job of putting photos into your TR? :lol: Way to get after it. How long is the drive from Ottawa?

Lucky Luke resembles the guy from HBO's "Entourage."

2pm to 1am - 11 hours.

End of the road on Monday to Ottawa with a detour to Bromont. Roughtly a 30-45 minutes break for gas/food/gear transfert into my car at Lucky's house.

icelanticskier":lbm25ghw said:

looks like north facing blanche la montagna (sp?) couloirs to me. parc de la g? m-mines?
more pics?
rog

Click to expand...

patrick, read more closely. i got the cigar. m-mines.

nice spot.

rog

Patrick":29hv04wn said:

TO BE CONTINUED...(BEFORE MIDWEEK). :dead horse:

Click to expand...

I'm really amazed to see me sking (Pat's pictures) well under the usual 1 year wait. =D>

Snow quality looks decent. How steep was that couloir vs. where you've skied on Mt. Washington or in the West?

Tony Crocker":1pe95ypj said:

How steep was that couloir vs. where you've skied on Mt. Washington or in the West?

Click to expand...

The steeps were similar. Friday couloir wasn't the steepest that I've seen, but the slope was probably 43 degrees for roughtly 1000ft vertical which is rare. I've definitely skied steeper, however the risk here is much greater. Turning couloir with narrow choke with a bit undermining on the side versus open areas in the Bowl at Tuckerman or the Great Fall at MB.

Saturday couloir was steeper and more nerve racking. (next part of TR). Pictures were scanned last night.

Awesome freaking trip Patrick.

Especially love the one pic of Madpat "climbing the last part."

SATURDAY: DAY 2

After a good day, we sent up the small tent in the campground. Pete the Pete and Éric were leaving work many hours away on Friday and we suppose to join us on the campground. They made it, but never found our spot. When they woke up, they found that a moose gave them a welcoming gift next to their tent. :-&

Temps dropped below freezing that night and it was still pretty cold when we got up. I needed to get my winter coat on for breakfast. Lucky had some awful coffee, so he decided to add something to it to make it taste better. :mrgreen:








Prior and after the previous day’s skiing, Lucky tested a different road with his girlfriend’s car. The road still had a lot of snow and he couldn’t make it to the other spot in order to access different terrain with similar steeps and couloirs.

Saturday morning we parked next that road and started getting our gear ready for the hike on that road. As we finished organizing up our backpack with all our gear, a group of locals showed up with a pickup truck. Not sure who joked around about getting a ride, but the guys offered to carry our gear at the end of the road. He also asked how much he could receive on ebay for all of our stuff.

So we started hiking along the road without our backpacks, crossing water and snow in some parts. The pickup made it, we were starting looking at some new freaking lines.

The approach wasn’t clear cut. We had first part was a serious bushwhack in hiking boots and the odd above knee snow. The rest involved route finding skinning. As we gather at the bottom of the apron, crowd was making it through the woods. Okay, this is Tuckerman, a crowd here would involve 10-15 people.

Although the temps moved below freezing that night, temps we definitely felt warmer. Blue sky and no wind. I didn’t forget to put sunscreen on my burnt face today.







All Lucky’s ski buddies plus the many locals that he meet were all there. There was two main couloirs on this face, the one called trois mousquetaires on the left had a ice fall at 1/3 up and a crevasse lower down and the couloir de l’aigle was still frozen solid. The couloir’s funnels into the shade for a few hundreds feet (see previous day pic).

We started off skiing to the left, at first everyone climb to the crevasse while Lucky stopped at the ice fall higher up. This place felt definitely steeper than the previous day’s low 40s degrees slope.

Snow had a soft topping, but the cover was still pretty solid. We eat as the others started up the Eagle chute.

This climb was definitely nerve racking. Lucky did it on a frozen surface a couple years ago. YIKES!!! 8-[ The choke/funnel is pretty long. At one point we stopped to let a telemarker down. She definitely seemed intimated by the choke and our group looking up at her. She nailed it and started relaxing once passed the choke. Once on top, you forget all about it. Enjoy the view, eat a bit and look at the extra couloirs on the next ridge. Wish list for the next day?














We started skiing before everything ended up in the shade and started freezing. Definitely a fun run. We skied the bottom of the other couloir when we noticed locals that Lucky knew ski from top of the icefall and down climb. Snow was apparently great above, but the downclimb wasn’t for the lighthearted. These locals would climb back up and hike on the ridge and dive into Couloir en S that we skied yesterday. OF course, I believe that the 2 of the 3 were leaving to Bolivia. It included the guide from Vertigo that gave us the Avy course the previous winter.

Clouds started moving in. The forecast called for 70% chance of rain on Sunday. Followed a local out of woods and he gave a ride to Éric and Pete + our gear. Lucky and I walked along the road.



As we got back to Lucky’s car. There was a gathering, drinking beer and munching. Talking and laughing. We finally meet up with the bunch from Zoneski. We hadn’t seen them in the morning, but they were skiing next to where we parked the previous day.




Great day...again. Terrain was steeper (probably 45-48 degrees) and gnarly on this day.

What will we do with the rain in the forecast. Will we leave and cut our trip short? We wouldn't lose anything, Lucky and I just passed two amazing days on amazing terrain.

TO BE CONTINUED...

killer patrick,

i've never skied that area past may 1st and the road in is always deep with snow cover with ski access only which for a day trip is a long a$$ slog. m. albert has been my playground of choice and it's nice to see the later season options in yer pics. my kind of terrain fer sure.

mount washington was amazing once again yesterday after a hard overnight refreeze and temps in the 60's, bluebird, with winds on the summit at like 5 mph. airplane still offered over 900 continuous vert and the corn was perfect. there will be skiing for yer birthday for sure.

thanx for the exotic skiing adventure report

rog

Patrick":199ieq88 said:

Caribou bone on high traverse

Click to expand...

What the heck is pink, beside the caribou bone ?? O

SUNDAY:

Okay, the good news for camping is that the night was pretty warm. Éric played guitar/harmonica and going through the repertoire of Neil Young, Pink Floyd, etc. According to Lucky, this brings the girls out, but the only girls around our tents would have been female moose. Look at your feet when you walk, moose crap is everywhere.

So we head in as the rain starts falling shortly before 11pm. Wind howled during the night and at one point Luc’s tent collapsed on us. Everything was wet inside. Pete was that he felt something on the edge of their tent, I felt something also. MMMhh!!! :-k

We had to get everything out and try to get everything dry. The rain was still falling, but not as hard. After many hesitations, Lucky, Pete and Éric decided to head out and ski. It was Pete and Éric’s last day and only had one day under their belt. I had already gotten 2 days and maybe another day on Monday, so I decided to pass. Extremeskiboy from Zoneski fame joined them later. I stayed around with the others Zoneskiers, did some little hiking and checked out the exhibit at the Information Centre. Once Pete and Éric were back, they started ungoing their stuff and drove back to Western Québec. Éric said that he didn’t like the snow. Lucky had a different opinion, but he was getting really wet skiing and hiking. Lucky and I did the same thing, we were going back in town. The temps were going below 0c and some our stuff was humid. One of the ZS pairs left, the others stayed on the campground.