graniteavenger
Apr 4, 2006, 2:51 AM
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Registered: May 8, 2004
Posts: 98
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Went out to attempt an ascent of Mt Garibaldi's North East face (located just north of Squamish) on Saturday the 1st of April. The weather forecast was for clearing skies in theafternoon, which was promising despite the light rain that was falling in East Van. Scott & I started off at 6:30am, and went skiing up into the clouds. Before long, it was raining, and after another hours ascent we made it into freshly falling snow. Visibility was becoming increasingly poor. After a few hours we made it to the top of Brohm Ridge. It was driving snow, and I could only see about 10 feet in front of me. Add to this the fact that it was about 5 inches of HEAVY wet snow laying on the previous layers, the avalanche risk was going up & up. Shortly after dicussing this we heard a sickening WHUMP, which was a fracture occuring in the underlying layers of snow. Alarm bells start going off, and we high tail it back to a clump of trees on the ridge crest. Here we sat and munched on a chocolate bar, drank some water, and discussed what we were going to do. Its agreed that any further progress up onto the glacier and up onto the upper slopes of the mountain would be far too risky. So its back off down to the trailhead we go. On the way into the trees, Scott had collapsed the side of the tree well, so we had a nice sitting platform with space for our feet and kit. At the end of our break I got up to ski out the other side of the group of trees, but stopped just short of the edge. "I think theres a drop off here mate" I say. Not being able to see anything further than the tips of my skis, I was reacting on a hunch. Sure enough I reach down with my ski pole to try and feel for the ground. Nothing. I get down on my hands and knees and poke about a bit, still nothing. I think that we'll go back out the way we came in. The ski out was fun, with the snow quality and visibility improving as we lost altitude. I managed to ski off of a 4 foot drop that I didn't see. It was a very Wil-e-coyote moment. One second I was going along, the next I'm flat on my back with my skis up in the air. Scott did an impressive full speed superman faceplant. He had full horizontal flight going on for about .5 of a second. Upon arriving back down at the road we were greeted by 3 large 4x4s idleing away in the middle of the road, whilst a bunch of old boys were unloading & revving up their ski-doos. What a contrast in modes of travel. So yes, while we failed on our attempt at getting up the route, we had a good time, and have agreed to go back and have another crack at it when there is a nice sunny day.
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