September 23, 2001, Black Tusk Microwave Area

Sunday the 23rd surprised us with a beautiful high pressure day sandwiched in between wretched and unexpected weather systems. The crux of the trip was finding other skiers to go out for a walk with but we ended up with four - Gordon, Helen, myself and Mark. We left Vancouver at a very casual 7:30am and headed for the access road just South of Whistler (labelled Cheakamus Lake - keep right after the main road to the dump). After a brief stop to let Mark's poor 4x4 cool down, we made it to the gate (not vandalised again, fortunately) at 5000 feet and parked. The bugs weren't bad, and the wind kept things fairly cool. We took our time walking along the Microwave Tower ridge and working our way back to the large north facing snowfield located on the shoulder of the Tusk. The snow was not dreadfully suncupped but it did have a lot of pebbles and other volcanic debris scattered in it up high and was a little chippy in that one's boards didn't come round all the ! time. I used the excuse of carrying a camera on my front to make a lot of cheesy alpine turns but the other folks let fly with a full 1000 feet of real genuflecting teles for the benefit of my Super-8. We skied three or four other shortish (200 foot) patches on the way back to the car which was better than walking up them. Unfortunately, the 11 km road is probably snowed in now due to low freezing levels up here so we won't be seeing this area too much unless there's a warm spell to wash it all down.

The whole trip was caught for posterity on Super-8 and, if there's a way to post it on the web - I'll try and put it up.

Jonathan