Soul Gypsy

A three day viscous lashing from the heavens brought snow upon snow and fun upon fun. I could never capture the experience without actually stopping to take photos. Which I didn’t do. Nonetheless everyday has been more exciting than the one before it and I just paused after a 10day stretch playing the drop knee boogie to consume some food, limber up and heal for the shredding and hucking to come. Oh I forgot to mention the lift lines were really bad and all the snow was skied up in a few hours each morning.

NOT!!!

Big breakfasts are always nice. I finished this one up with a big bowl of Ice Cream.

2 egg mushroom onion, tomato and cheddar omelet, Bacon and hashbrowns. All cooked to perfection I might add.

More updates to come! Tons of lines are now filled in at the ski hill and ready to be shrallped! The stoke is high in Revelstoke!

At home I was usually the kid coming up with bad ideas, but here at the PW’s in Utah I can barely keep pace. Noah and Andy are always up to something and when Andy rushed off with my brand new sticks and bindings to mount them at 7:00pm I didn’t exactly know what I was in for. It turned out into a bit of mission, but Andy was kind enough to go on a wild goose chase and wrestle my bindings into submission just so I could share the pain. Waking up in the dark, meeting at 7:00am we planned to get an early start on the day. Much to our dismay, the shitshow Andy started the night before (he said it was the longest hardest mount he has had) was continuing. My boot was at Rosenberg’s where the mounting went down so we started our day with a little morning drive while the other boys headed up to the hill. As we parked at Pole-line trailhad I realized I had forgotten my gloves, luckily Andy had an extra pair (typical poncho), we flipped our heelthrows and started the trek. We planned to head to Cardiff and lap until we dropped, in which case that forsaken soul would have to stand back up and finish the 10,000 vert. T’was bound to be Gigaling good time.

Lap One! It was a perfect day to play in the mountains, splitter blue skies, perfect powder and a determination to “just keep hiking.”

Lap Two. Andy’s smiling, the legs are feeling good and about to enjoy some silky turns.

Noah’s Lap three, he was 1000 vert ahead all day, due to Andy and my little morning excursion.

Gi-gi-gi-great!

Getting another one, Noah, Andy and Darryl heading up the skinner.

Lap four, the sun is now down and I had to keep moving just to stay warm. I was a layer short for the chilly afternoon. A good excuse to keep plodding though! Over the half way mark at this point. In distance, not pain of course.

Pumping out another one! Noah feeling the burn, I had to giver a little to keep up with these folks.

Lap Five: Andy started wrapping his skins around his body to keep the warm and sticky. I don’t know how Andy was feeling but I sure felt like I had rocks or something else heavy strapped to my ankles.

Darryl, Jacobsen and Noah at our gear catch, melting some snow and staying fueled. I liked to get a little head start up the climb if I could.

There’s a Half moon rising and I’m probably a about 3/4ths depleted.

(Dramatization). 9000vert landmark, still have to hike out of this biatch, legs are led, hips are hurting and the gas tank is empty.

Darkness approached, looks like it is going to be black to black from car to car today.

Andy stilling the hallucinations and psyched to have hit 10 gi-ga GRANDE! First time I have personally gotten a so fully drained and even a little ataxic from a day of skiing.

Twice as much vert means twice as many burritos! The smile says it all. Can never say no to an adventure, but I can’t say I’m looking forward to hauling those super fat boards up the hill for 10,000 vert anytime soon. But if the snow is deep enough….

With the van down and out, happily parked in Auburn, CA. I have been on the two bag ski trip. Planned to continue for the next 5 months or so. Made possible by the kindness of my friends and a little suffering here and there. Traveling without a car is proving to be both liberating and troublesome. Amtrak is a great way to get to the ski hill, depending on where you are going and call your winter home. With no weight limit on bags, no annoying airport security and rushing for the connecting flight the train provides what is probably the most stress free way of traveling. You can pack your own food and bring your own beer. Don’t drink to much though because if you plan it right you should be arriving in the middle of a snow storm. Try doing that on an airline, or driving. There are no slippery roads, no traffic, and no canceled flights. Just walk on the train, stash your bags and keep on keepin’ on.

The train-rate system is a little funky but if you can plan ahead good prices can be had. The train works similar to airline seat system, the first half of the seats go for one price, and then they elevate after that. The least expensive ticket (between SLC and Truckee) is $67 then $84 then $105 and then all the up to $138. You can see how important it is to get that low fare. You can book your ticket online but if you are buying your ticket the night before you will need to call in and get a confirmation number, a very important number to have if you are planning on riding the train. Also if you go about it this way, you can book your ticket days in advance, get the low fare and not pay upon getting your reservation. That means if it starts snowing you don’t have to leave! But if the plan is on you can hop on the train. I usually was able to buy my ticket the day before or two days before and hit the lower two price points.

Make sure you pack light enough so you can carry all your own gear, enough gear to last the winter right here!

Truckee train station, no place to buy your ticket here, so be sure you have your number before arriving.

Hauling my load and taking a self-portrait at the same time is straining. Lucky product placement, haha.

Bring some business for the train ride, I finished my course in Psychology traveling between destinations.

It was snowing at everystop between truckee and SLC, please be snowing when I arrive, please be snowing when I arrive!

Hell yeah! It was nuking when we pulled into SLC. Two for two on that one. The train arrives at 3:00am so you either need a good friend (Noah Howell generously picked me up) or some money for a taxi or something. Get a few more hours of shut eye – or I guess if you are really burly, suit up and go skiing! (never tried that).

The skiing was great the next day. We played around in Days Fork and on Emma’s. Its awesome to be able to travel 600 miles, be no worse for the wear and not miss a day of skiing through the whole ordeal. (well maybe a little beat down).

Two examples of Gypsy Food, I pulled that PBJ roll out of my pack after a week, mmmmm good.

“You know how to repel right?,” “Um well yeah” I answer. And in that instant our day changed from a peaceful romp in the mellow Silver/Days fork area to a long slog, no fall zone ski into epic bushwack. This was my tenth day of touring in a row and the early season legs were starting to feel the effects of my perpetual snow hunting. Here is a google earth screenshot of our route. My guess is 8-10miles? Red is up and blue is down. I don’t have the strongest sense of direction so I like to check out Google Earth afterwards to better understand the terrain we traveled through that day. This are obviously very easy canyons to follow, but I see it as good practice. The top of the map is South, I don’t know why I did that.

This is Andy heading up the shoulder of the Pfiefferhorn the skinnning was rough here so I resorted to boot packing while Andy was able to skin the slippery traverse seen above.

The bootpack up to the shoulder, Andy in the distance. With the winds a howling and the legs burning this is where we start to realize that we might be a little late to set up for the PW premiere and that we were on a bit of an adventure. Luckily for us the wind subsided enough for us to summit and we decided to continue on our mission.

Me bootpacking to the summit

The entrance to the chute was not 100% filled in and while it looked marginally skiable it was still pretty thin and we took the safer route of repelling into the entrance.

Entrance to the chute, Andy setting up the rope.

This is me repelling down the entrance.

Andy coming of the rope, this is where we put our skis on laboriously, clipping the heel clip on tele’s on a steep face is always an exciting time. We both had Megawatts for the day, my 178′s didn’t do bad chopping down the chute, I can’t say Andy’s 188′s liked it too much.

There were places where it was a little gnarly and narrow for me to do tele turns but the snow was actually pretty quality and dropping the knee felt good. Just out of sight, where the chute curves right, the first rap awaits.

Andy ripping the tele down the upper snowfield.

Andy clipped in and getting ready for the second rappel. Don’t drop anything!

Me coming down the rappel, this was my first time on a mission like this and was not completely coordinated but it was definitely a different aspect to skiing that I would like to explore more. Skiing above exposure has a way of bringing complete focus, while similar to charging freeski tip lines the absolute requirement to stay on your feet demands a strong head.

This is me chopping some turn down the narrowing chute above the repel. The snow in the apron was full quality, and we most certainly enjoyed the final pitch. The deeper we got down the drainage, the more heinous the skiing became, this photo is exemplary but does not do full justice to the rock skipping, bushwaking that just got thicker (brush), thinner (snow) until we ended up taking off our skis and walking to the road, during which time I slipped into the creek on the stream crossing, Good times! But I must say I will probably not be heading down Hogum’s for awhile.