Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Not-Thin-Lizzie

It was Easter weekend. We wanted to ski the Ashlu-Elaho traverse... but the weather forecast didn't contain the sort of words you want to be out on glaciers in. You know... words like "poor" right before "visibility". 

So, Kala got into John Baldwin's really great guidebook for the coast mountains and picked out the Lizzie Creek Cabin. It sounded perfect. An approach that could take "up to 12 hours", creek crossings, battling up through steep trees in spring snow. All the good stuff.

We got in to the cabin in about 8 hours, along with a gang of UBC folks... just enough of us to fill the place up. Well, we would have been 1 person over but one poor guy snapped both his skis on the way in and had to head out. Jay, Kala, Lina, and I were treated to some dubious snow, some biting wind, and lots of clouds for a couple of days... but the payoff came on Monday. We woke to sunshine and a good layer of light, fresh snow. YEAH! We did a couple of laps on a great sparsely treed slope we had skied the day before, then headed out to the car via a really spectacular descent down to Lizzie Lake. Fun, fun, fun. It's good to be back in BC before the snow disappears. 

Photos will come when I have some. My camera died and is on holiday in Toronto being fixed.




For now... here are the greatest hits of the South America trip, with added captions. Brace yourself, there are about 120 of them. If you view the slideshow... click the "view info" thing at the top right to see what you are looking at.