Skiing on Mount Whymper

Big Sykorsky Helicopter flying over

Stoked!

Beautiful colour in the tree stump

Another colourful dead tree

Looking up the Whymper Slide Path to the summit of Mount Whymper

Sylvain getting ready to dig a pit and do a snow profile

Looking across to another skiable slide path on Mount Whymper

Silly digging a pit to do a column test for our snow profile

This is the clean shear that occurred at a snow depth of 40cm.

Kimmer, all smiles :)

Looking across the valley to Mount Stanley and the Stanley Headwall

Looking up the Whymper Slide Path. We skiied skiers right of the main slide path

in the center of the photo from just below the major rock band in the gully



Silly looking up at what we skied!

Had a great day of skiing with Sylvain at Mount Whymper just into BC on Highway 93S. We left the house at 7AM with coffees in hand and had a chatty drive heading west. Got slowed up a little by the 1A turnoff just west of Banff for an overturned car that ended up on its drivers side, parked in the center of the Trans Canada Highway. Interesting?! The road conditions definitely deserved some respect that some drivers weren't willing to pay out. Another car was parked in the ditch as we passed the Sunshine turnoff!

As we pulled into the Stanley parking lot we saw two climbers walking back down the approach trail to the Stanley Headwall. They approached us at the truck, we were already sitting inside putting our boots on, and they began to tell us of the epic they had on the trail up to the Headwall. Somehow they got distracted from the main trail (which would be difficult to miss?) and they ended up in the creek that flows down from the Stanley Valley. After a half an hour of disoriented slogging, the fellas returned to the trailhead with disappointed hopes of climbing on the headwall. They quickly conjered up a plan 'B' and headed off north towards the Icefields Parkway with more optimistic hopes.

Silly and I shouldered our skis and headed across the highway, then strapped in and started skinning up. We came across an old skin track, presumably from the Banff Snow Safety Crew, and followed it up to the top of a nice chute. Both Silly and I agreed that it would be wise to ski this chute and get a feel for the snow pack since it was both of our first times in the area this year, plus the line was looking pretty damn sweet! Silly dropped in first and woo hooed his way down just about stumbling on his smile at the bottom! I dropped in second while Silly shot some video of my turns, and I too had the same issues with my smile at the bottom! Fist bumps were exchanged and we were quick to reskin our skis and head back up :)

This time we continued up through the trees above the chute, then crossed the avalanche path above a convex roll that we both agreed made us nervous, and we continued over to the main slide path that drains the upper slopes of Mount Whymper. Silly crossed the avalanche path first while I observed, then I followed once he was safely across to the other side. The slide path had recently slid so the slope was stable but there's always the chance of crossfire hanging up above so we instinctively eered on the side of caution.

We picked our way up through the trees with increasing difficulty from deceptively steep slopes and the lack of an established skin track, but we perserveared to a high point we had both agreed on. Silly pulled out the snow profile gear and dug a pit to exam the stability of the layers buried in the snowpack. He found a clean shear at 40cm possibly from a sun crust that had formed earlier in the season, the remaining snowpack was strong all the way through the last 105 cm to ground. With this knowledge of the snowpack, and the strength of the shear test, we now felt confident to ski the slopes that fell away below us. We also been assessing the conditions from the moment we strapped our skis on from the truck so we had quite a bit of confidence in the snow conditions. We both know the seriousness of the terrain we chose to put ourselves into so we always make sure we're feeling confident and educated about our decisions.

I dropped in first and encountered variable conditions with my first three turns being nice and soft, then the remaining turns on a thin layer of fresh snow on wind affected slab. Not quite the conditions we had expected from the point of our snow profile. Silly dropped in second and I shot video while he kept it together through the wind slab section. We continued down skiers right of the avalanche path into some lower angled terrain, but very soft and consistent throughout. We woo hooed past a group of skiers gearing up to descend behind us, and skiied down to a tree island to catch our breath and let the lactic acid drain out of our quads. Our smiles told it all, as we finished the final few hundred feet down to the highway. High fives were exchanged as we smiled at each other with grins that can only be generated from such a great day out with a good friend in the mountains! Thanks Silly :)