New Year's trip to the Asulkan cabin off Roger's Pass with Megan, Lukas, Phil, Oliver, Natalie, Stephen, Jazzy and Shaia. We stayed at the Roger's Pass Best Western on the 31st, and were all looking forward to the breakfast served from 6:30 on at the hotel. Unfortunately, the cooks all got drunk and didn't show up to work in the morning. We were not impressed.
Then we decided that despite our plans to stay at the Wheeler hut for the first couple of nights, we should rush up to the Asulkan because a storm threatened to dump a lot of snow on the slopes above the trail in, and we didn't want to not want to risk the trip up and get stuck in the Wheeler for the whole week.
Of course, that meant that the planned two days worth of food hadn't been eaten before the climb, and also that we were carrying tents in case the Asulkan was as full as bookings suggested... And also, once we got high enough, it was rather windy. But eventually we made it to the cabin.
Then we sat around in the cabin all of the next day as the storm raged. The most adventure we had were several epic treks across to the outhouse. When you need to put full Gore-Tex and goggles on just to cover a hundred feet, you know you'd rather be in the pub telling the story, and therefore you must be having fun, right?
In the rush of packing, Megan forgot the backcountry camping scrabble board. But hey, we had time to kill, so we just made our own. Stephen had previously sorted through the 18 packs of cards (did I mention having time to kill?) at the cabin, so we used cards from the incomplete decks to make scrabble pieces. Phil's enough of a psychotic crazy Scrabble nut that he remembered where all the special squares on the board are, and how many of each letter, and the scores on each. Or, well, close enough, anyway.
Then we decided to attempt to measure the wind. Stephen's attempt (Stephen's pictures of the trip are on his web page) involved hanging a full nalgene bottle off a ski-pole support and measuring how far it got pushed by the wind. Then he made a wide variety of assumptions about parameters, and decided the wind had been about 60kmh. My attempt is illustrated in the movie at left. On the last attempt, the grocery bag is covering about 3.2m in about 3/15sec, for a wind speed of 58kmh. Close enough, I guess.
But the third day dawned, well, not warm and sunny and calm exactly, but one could see *something* other than white, and the wind was only whistling through the walls, rather than shaking and rattling them.
So we went skiing. Of course, everything was windloaded to heck and back, but there's a broad ridge below the cabin that didn't seem steep enough to slide, and wasn't overhung by anything hazardous, so we shredded it up.
Thing is, except for Phil and Lukas, none of us are actually very good at shredding it up, especially in thigh-deep awesome powder. Most of us are still skiing skinny straight toothpicks that just don't float up quite so much, so we all fall down go boom rather often...
Except Jazzy, of course. Jazzy's got four-wheel drive, and a low centre of gravity. Not much floatation, though, so she spends most of her time swimming in, rather than walking on, the snow.
Some of us also have more trouble with the skin tracks than others. Phil and Lukas think my skins are too narrow. I have no idea what gives them that impression.
Fourth and/or fifth days were pretty much the same. Lots of wind at the cabin, lots of freshly fallen or freshly wind-deposited snow in the trees below the cabin. Megan's shralping (I think Lukas just likes making up words, but it works as long as we're not playing scrabble) with the best of 'em on her new-ish AT gear.
Natalie seems rather unperturbed by Oliver wiping out behind her.
Did I mention the snow was up to mid-thigh? It was awesome.
Somewhere in here Phil decided it would be fun to ski a run with my toothpicks and let me try his phat skis. That was a riot. All of a sudden, Phil's sliding backwards down the skin track at every turn. Here he's decided the skin track's just too steep and gone off to make his own.
Skiing with the phat skis was awesome. Lukas took video of it. Following the trip, Lukas is letting me try his old skis (Tua Big Easy's). They're a bit beat up and there's a small chunk missing out of the base, so we'll have to see if a p-tex drip candle will last at least a few trips. Otherwise we'll have to see whether a $15-$20 base welding repair at the Vancouver Ski Service place will do the trick, or whether it'll need the more costly base patch repair. But first I guess we'll see if they're phat-boy enough to be worth it. They've gotta be better than the Tele-bird toothpicks, at any rate...
Back to the cars. Good thing one carries shovels while skiing. In case it's not immediately obvious, there is in fact a VW golf behind the folks in this picture. Notice the rearview mirror just above Phi's back.
