October 13, 2003, Black Tusk Microwave Towers

With high pressure looming, and a few days of precip and 4500 foot freezing levels behind us, a few phone calls got an intrepid team of 6 tele/AT enthusiasts together for Canadian Thanksgiving Day turns.  We were lucky enough to have a number of G3 folks (including Oliver himself) along so we piled into the official G3 "Truckosaurus" (seats 5 with gear) and headed up to the Cheakamus River West Side Main just out of Function Junction south of Whistler.  Richard and Robbie were the only free heel die hards along (they kept casting frowns in the direction of the fallen ones) and we took the opportunity to test drive a few pairs of the new production G3 skins (along with the special anti-cross linking mesh for long term storage).

4400 feet brought us to snowline, so we put on a set of front chains but we made it to the upper gate at 5000 feet without any issues.  We skinned right from the vehicle and headed round the south side of the towers (doing a little boot packing on the windward side) and popped into the backbowls.  Coverage on the old snowfields was surprisingly good (about 1-2 feet of new on old firn snow) and the ski quality was a bit punchy (fast and just enough of a minor crust to snap your boards around very quickly) but we laid down 2 runs off the approach ridge to the Tusk, 2 600 footers down the North side (mmmm good)  and a finishing pair of runs on the exit.  The exit road finally turned to more rocks than snow, so we all bailed out between 100-300 yards from the car.  Amazingly, we probably didn't hit any rocks until we were right on the exit road.

The weather was pretty clagged into start but we got some big patches of visibility (enough to enjoy our runs with top to bottom) and folks without sunscreen were a little salmon coloured by the end of the day.  Temperatures were probably barely sub-zero in the shade and decidedly short sleeve t-shirt oriented in the sunshine.  I guess the FL has gone way up for now but we might get some more new snow towards the end of next week (around Oct 24 onwards) and the base will be nicely pounded down after this deluge!

Jonathan.