One of my favorite places in the whole world. I spent a bunch of time there in the past month. Back in Canada now. Moving. Working. Life is ever changing and busy. Will update soon.
Combi
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View from our upstairs window. Stellar evening last night in Revelstoke. Mt Begbie defines the skyline and rises over 7,500 ft above the Columbia River.
The is one of the coolest road signs I've ever seen. Wild horses. And you will often see them on the road side. Chilcotin Mtns, BC.
The Pineapple Express that bombed the BC Coast and Interior ended up as a powerful Chinook in Calgary. Temps hit 10 C and the Sun was out. I took a few hours out of my “spoken word” tour hosting avalanche safety seminars and giving talks to skate. It was like somebody hit the relief valve and I got reset. Skating does that to me.
The full pipe, deep, and shallow end at the Calgary Skatepark. The full pipe has 15' trannies, the deep end is 12' or 13' deep with a solid 2' of vert. The concrete is rough and bails are burely. I broke my left patella (knee cap) while doing a frontside air in it back in 2001. Yes I had knee pads on. I have to admit, I still think about that when I drop in there. I actually took this photo in September. There was lots of leaves and shit in there today. I ended up mostly skating the clover and huge street zone.
Memories tend to be called out of the catacombs of of my mind when time is on my hands. Typically these moments that are forever locked away in my brain need something to knock them free. A few nights ago I was up late because I couldn’t sleep. Surfing away on my computer I opened up Google Earth and spied on Mt. Baker’s Roman Headwall and Mt. Shuksan’s Sulphide Glacier and pop some old stories started to flow. Let me explain.
The top of the Sulphide Glacier route on Mt. Shuksan is a 3rd class rock scramble in the summer and a 50-55 degree chute and open face in the winter and spring. It is short, but is full on. I was standing on the summit with Craig Kelly with the intention of shredding the line. Craig dropped in first and I couldn’t see him. After a minute or so, I got close to the entrance, saw Craig getting to the bottom, and with my balls in my stomach I side slipped into the line. It was a solid 55 degrees at the entrance and the snow wasn’t that great. Now, this was an intense line for me and even though we had climbed up the slope and knew the snow, I still had to side slip for a bit to get the confidence to start doing turns. What I saw when I entered the line blew my mind. Craig hadn’t side slipped at all, in fact he laid out perfect turns from the start. No hesitation. Pretty psyched, we both went to the top again and rode back down.
Two days prior Craig, my girlfriend Andrea and I were standing on the summit of Mt. Baker. Again, following Craig we descended a variation of the Roman Headwall. Think far skiers right down a steep gully / bowl feature flanked by seracs on one side and a giant ice cliff on the other. It is beautiful line, probably 1000 ft high. We didn’t have great snow conditions. I watched Craig enter the top of the bowl, pop a mandatory ollie over a crevasse, and rocket down the entire bowl in his grace and style. That was the first time Craig had been to the top of Mt. Baker after nearly 20 years of riding the ski area. It was an honorable moment for him and I was humbled to be with him. He bought a very nice bottle of wine later that evening. It was 2002.
Our adventure on Mt. Baker. Sorry no real photos.
The summit of Mt. Shuksan above the Sulphide Gl. The line on the face is snow in the spring. I don't think it gets done very much.