Valhalla Mtn Lodge Hut Week
March 15 -22, 2008
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| After joining NCMG in 2006 for a trip on the
Haute Route, Karen Thorpe and Andy Riemenschneider asked Larry
to put together a week long hut trip in Canada. The goal of
the trip was a week in the mountains with good friends and mostly
to ski powder. |
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| As the name would imply, the hut sits
in the Valhalla range of the Selkirk mountains of British
Columbia. We accessed the hut via a 10 minute helicopter
flight from the nearby town of Burton. |
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| The hut was cozy and warm, located in
a basin at 6900' of elevation. There was ski terrain in
every direction around the hut, and by week's end, we
would get a good sampling of all of it. |
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| The Group: (L to R) Lori Crouch, Rob
Dilling, Chuck Rose, Glenn Walton, Rachel Friedman, Ira
Thorpe, Roxanne Mason (our Cook), Brian Cross (Hut custodian),
Larry Goldie, Jeff Ward, Andy Riemenschneider, Karen Thorpe. |
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| Most days started out something like
this. A short, flat skin across one of the many lakes
would lead us into steeper terrain where we would access
the goods. |
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| Here the group climbs up into the alpine
terrain of Chico Basin. |
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| Rob and Karen look on as the group skis
down toward Sunlight Lake. |
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| Looking back across at a run called Sun
Dance. If you look carefully you can see our tracks coming
from the col at the upper right side of the photo and
working down to the lower left, right through the sunlit
terrain in the center of the photo.. |
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| Lunch at the bottom of Sun Dance. Lori
shows us how to really relax while in the mountains. |
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| Day after day was spent exploring new
terrain and seeking out the best skiing possible. Most
days we found it. Here Karen rips tele turns though the
soft snow. |
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| Over the course of the week, we received
over 80 cm of new snow. This translated into many, many
face shots. Here Ira gets one. |
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| With all of the new snow, our tracks
seemed to get erased almost every day. This increased
the amount of trailbreaking, but was a great tradeoff
for untracked descents every run of the trip. |
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| Neither Larry or Jeff had been to the
hut before, so they spent some time in pow wow contemplating
lines for later in the week. |
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| The pow wows usually paid off with more
great skiing. Here Rachel manages to have a little fun
in the sun. |
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| While much of the week was quite stormy,
when the sun came out it provided some amazingly sublime
light. Here Glenn follows a track under McKean peak. |
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| The terrain also offered many unique
vantage points. Here the group takes off skins in preparation
for a run down "Surprise" with Chico basin in
the background. |
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| Touring back up toward the top of one
of our favorite runs - Mainline. |
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| More fun on the descent - here Chuck
(the Mayor) Rose comes up for air. |
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| Jeff finding a fresh line. Not a hard
thing to do... |
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Last run of the last day down the perennial favorite
- Mainline. You can just barely see tracks from one
of the previous days in the left of the photo.
We have been home for 2 days now and we are already
planning next year's trip!
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