Yo-Yo in Garabaldi

Scotty, Nick & I, left Vancouver in fine style around 6:30 and managed to make it up to the Elfin Lakes parking lot around 8. It was a cool overcast night and we knew that the ski in would be great. After a few moments packing and storing excess kit in the truck we were off.


The skin trak was like a bloody highway, with plenty of room to lurch both left and right. We ran into one lonely snowshoe-er who had decided to pitch a tent because the warming hut was just to crowded. Well, we didn't mind cause we we're headed to Elfin Lake hut anyways. We arrived there around 11:00 and immediately set to waking up the whole cabin, which turned out the be 3 very nice girls.

Waking up on sat was great. There was tons of fresh snow outside and we'd had a very refreshing breakfast. While we introduced ourselves to Kelly, Jen and Meghan we played a great game of Acey Duecey and passed the morning in laughter. We actually didn't even manage to finish the game due to the fact that we became much to excited about all the fresh snow.

Scrambling, we donned our gear and headed outside for some play time. Both I and Scotty decided a ski off the roof of the hut was in order to commence our day. Then we headed out to the gargoyles, dug a pit and found that the stability of the snow was excellent with ~2 feet of fresh powder on top.

Skiing was amazing! We dropped line after line and had nothing but light fluffy powder in our faces. I was even getting the stuff up through the bottom of my coat when I jumped from turn to turn. I problably shouldn't complain considering we don't get many days of snow like that.


Nick was ripping it up on his tele ski's and was doing amazingly well for being new to them. Scotty just couldn't get enough and I certainly was enjoying myself. What an amazing day it turned out to be.

We headed out around 3 and managed to make it back to the truck just as dusk was approaching. With satisfying sighs we threw our gear into the back and jumped in for the eventful drive back to Squamish.

Now when I say "eventful" I mean that Scotty's tires weren't exactly gripping the ice beneath his truck and the chains we had with us we're just a bit to big, so using them was out of the question. Instead Me and Nick found ourselves walking alongside the truck with our crampons on pushing the back end in while Scotty kept the front passenger tire in the snowbank. In the end it worked out well and we made it back none the worse for wear. But walking the truck out from the Elfin Lakes parking lot took us longer than the ski out. Which I thought was rather humerus.

More interesting photo's:

East Ridge - Mount Matier

Well, this was my second time up to the Matier/Joffre region in the past month to enjoy some of it's scenic beauty. This time it was with my buddy Nick to check out the upper section of the east ridge.

We set off from Vancouver on friday night and managed to get to the Keiths Hut parking lot by around 8:30. Not bad time for having left Vancouver around 5. We grabbed our kit and started the ski in under a fantastically clear night, which we knew wouldn't last for long with a large front moving up Howe sound. The almost full moon lit up the snow filled meadows with thousands of little stars and made for a very asthetic, though icy skin to the hut.

Waking to our alarms early the next morning we set out heading to the moraine that would take us to a shelf just below our intended access to the east ridge.



The snow was shit with an awefull crust that when punctured revealed about 6 inches of loose unconsolidated snow. After gaining the ridge we continued to ski up to the point where the ridge significantly steepens. We threw our crampons on and started kicking our way up a nice 40 deg slope which was plenty hard after a couple of weeks with no snow but plenty of wind.



We crested the point where me and Scotty had dropped off the ridge on the previous trip around 9:30am, so far we were making great time while watching the weather front move in on us.



We could tell that after this point the ridge became a bit more technical with some mixed rock and much sharper terrain features. We climbed the first couple false horizons on ~55 deg snow with no trouble, just an amazing view and it wasn't till about 10:30 that we reached our first mixed ground.



I threw in a decent nut and a bomber knifeblade and set Nick up for the lead. We had only brought an 8mm, 30 M rope so hopefully the pitch wouldn't be to long. Nick headed up with ease and I got some great shots of him from the belay stance. He ended up using the whole 30M and managed to set up a sweet belay from the top of a small snowy spire.

Snowy Spire



After seconding and cleaning the couple of piecies from the pitch I set off traversing across a fine knifeblade. This would connect the lower rocky portion to the upper portion where we would need to make our rappel. We found a rap station all set up and discussed the logic of rapping to another block since we didn't feel our one 30M rope would make it. I lead the way down and found some excellent snowy ramps that would allow us to rap right onto a little snowy shoulder without having to set up a second station. It appears that the 30M rope was just the right length!




By this time we had really started to notice the weather was picking up and blowing us in just about every direction. We started up the last portion of the east ridge and met up with the northeast face (standard route) up Matier and took a few moments to debate the weather. After considering the current white out conditions and extreme wind we decided that tagging the summit wasn't worth the risk.



We started heading down and I noticed that the wind had deposited enough snow to make it ski-able. So as Nick finished the boot pack down I strapped on my ski's and had a fun and quick descent to the Joffree/Matier Col. Before we new it we were skiing down the glacier right back to Kieths hut. We were home in about an hour.

We spent the remainder of the night hanging out with a bunch of cool kids and enjoying the luxurious Keiths hut.