Go Skate Day – Vancouver 2010 from brian caissie on Vimeo.

Back in ’03 I was living in Ketchum, Idaho working for the US Forest Service. One day Senator John Kerry came to town early on in the presidential race. He wanted to get in some down time before his life got really crazy. I got this sticker of a local coffee shop and tried to give it to him out of good humor.

My chance came early one morning when Senator Kerry was going backcountry snowboarding. I failed. I actually met the guy, but didn’t hand over the sticker. I’m sure he would have gotten a good laugh at it.

To the Senator’s credit, he hiked with snowshoes and a board on his back over 2,000 ft that morning. He got in a reasonable run and then headed over to the ski area for the afternoon. Solid day. Especially if you are in a Presidential race and 60 years old. The next day the media and Bush administration made an issue out of Kerry participating in extreme sports. On the same day Bush went to a NASCAR race and was applauded for relating to normal Americans. You know the story from there and is history…….

I believe this was 1994. Standard backside air. 12' vert ramp. Seattle.

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.

There is nothing like wiring frontside grinds on concrete coping after the annual five month hiatus forced by BC’s winter.  The feeling is unbelievable.  It seems that it always takes a few tries to get them. After a little while though they come back and the mighty frontside grind goes down with force and grace.

Slocan, BC is a town of a few hundred about 75 km from Nelson, BC and somehow they managed to build the best bowl in the BC Interior.  It is so smooth and endless lines flow. It has an 8’ deep end, with various other heights, pockets, and hips to hit. I’m not sure why they didn’t put any vert in the bowl and really is the only major drawback.

Kaslo has a fun park if you are passing through. Pretty rad little street zone and the bowl is fun, although kinked in spots.

This fella Sky built a bowl in his yard in Trout Lake and was nice enough to let us skate. It is a very fun bowl in a very chill and great setting.

The drive from Kaslo to Trout Lake is 100 km of back roads. It is unbelievable and one of the most awesome spots in BC. We checked out spawning trout along the way. The biggest I’ve ever seen 10-20 lb each.

In a discussion regarding conditions and whether to proceed or not, we heard a rumble. It got louder and louder, to the point where we made the initial motions to start running. The snow was pounding; the fog was thick. The rumbling stopped, but fog prevented our view up the Mouse Trap. We stayed put. Realistically, we were in a pretty safe spot.

It was obvious that conditions where shitty. Overnight 20-40 cm fell with really warm temperatures. The missing ingredient in my mind was wind. No wind, no avalanches. The wind was not blowing yet, at least that is what I thought. I was trying to justify how to walk through the Mouse Trap and up to the tree triangle below the Asulkan Hut. Make a few runs and slide home.

The cold front was upon us. It was snowing 3 or 4 cm per hour and the wind had picked up, at least in the alpine. We were below a very wind exposed place at Rogers Pass. The slopes above are subjected to heavy cross loading. The hour of the avalanches had come.

As we were getting ready to go home, the fog cleared out of the Mouse Trap, and a pile of debris blocked its upper entrance. A natural avalanche came down and ran across it. It didn’t have the momentum to run down the Mouse Trap. A ski run and avalanche path called the Ravens pulled out. The avalanche likely ran on a sun crust. It was a size 3.0 and put 3-5 m of debris in the creek.

Just as we started to leave another rumble started. It sounded like the path that we were adjacent to was coming down. We were already in a safe zone, but skied away instead of watching. We avoided the avalanche runouts on our ski out of the valley.

My assessment and judgment was off. I’m not sure if I would have skied up there or not, but I was certainly figuring out how I wanted to do it and not simply pulling the pin.

I’m not sure if this statement makes any sense to most people, but I’m glad this happened to me. I have a tendency to try and thread the needle, especially if conditions are poor. The problem with threading the needle is that, if you miss the eye, you pay.