Are we going this time?

The week end is (finally) in sight... and looks nice! I feel I haven't seen the sun for the last two weeks. Work, then rain, then.. work again! Powder sugar on the top of the mountains on Monday was a pleasant surprise. But maybe not ready to go skiing yet.

The trip I missed on Ajax was apparently a little rough, very, very icy. Am I ever going to get the pics? I don't know.

It might be the right week end for that trip the Norwegian Connection and I have been postponing for more than a year now... NC was VERY ambitious last summer and said he wanted to climb all the summits of the Bitterroot visible from the valley before leaving. All we did  was maybe 2 or 3 hikes (...). Time is flying, we're all busy, so he revised his plan. 

Now it's down to 1 hike! And we've talked about it all summer trying to find the moment where we'd both be in town, and ready.

Our plan is to climb and follow the Romney Ridge, between Canyon Creek and Blodgett Canyon, all the way to High Lake. Camp there, maybe try to go up Canyon Peak (maybe not) and then hike back via Canyon Creek. Last week was rainy and stormy, but what about this week end?

It might be a little chilly.

And we might not make it all the way since 1) we don't know what the "trail" is going to be like, 2) we will start late on Saturday since we have to say goodbye Friday to J-Boogie who is leaving us for the Ugly Man.

Well, I'll just say this is the plan and we'll see what happens.

titidi...

Looks like the announced trip is not going to happen. I let the guys leave without me today, because I ended up having important "social obligations"... and a little bit of work to do as well...

Oh well. I should get pictures from their trip though. Small consolation.

Back on tracks

The last time I skied this year was on July 13th. This means that on saturday, I'll have taken 2 months off. What a good time to get back on my favorite transportation mode!

I know it might not be the best snow of the year (hopefully) but I hear it calling me already. Last year's total was 35 days. This year, I will try to do better, and in any case go at least 32 days.

So Saturday, we'll head to the Big Hole, spend the night on the shore of Ajax Lake, and plan on skiing Ajax peak (10078) on Sunday. I'm going to have to reopen the ski shop...

King of the Bitterroot

It's funny how this picture makes me feel discombobulated... I have to stop and look at it remembering where I took it to remember that, no, it is not upside-down.

I am actually sitting on top of Trapper Peak, 10157 ft, looking down at Cave Lake. You can see it if you look between the cloud on the right and the cloud at the bottom. Behind, a  ridge looking like a wall, separates Trapper Creek from the North Fork.

The hike up the highest peak of the Bitterroot is not a difficult hike. It climbs for about 4.2 miles, with an elevation gain of about 3800 ft from the trailhead, but, even though the start is scary, every steep fragment is followed by a little plateau, allowing us to recover before the next big effort. The end of the hike requires a little bit of scrambling on sometimes moving rocks - but again nothing terrible. Of course, one has to consider then who one hikes with: it can totally change the difficulty of the hike... 

Well my super-fit friends (I haven't found nicknames for all of them yet so I won't list the members of the happy party I went hiking with), who had just done an olympic distance triathlon the day before while I was probably watching TV laying on the couch, made my day a little harder since I had at some times a hard time keeping up with them.

The effort was worth it, despite the big cloud cover:

Here is the bowl between North Trapper Peak (to the left) and the East Trapper Peak (to the right) that I hope to ski before I leave the valley...

Here a little clearer view of the East Peak, and closer, the false peak preceding Trapper Peak, were most of the scrambling happens.

And finally, when the weather was cooperative enough, we could get a quick look at the Bitterroot Wilderness to the west of the peak.

The chilly temperatures chased us quickly from the summit. Fortunately, since the only two muscles I have happen to be my quads,  my downhill hike turned out to be much faster and smoother... And of course, by the time we reached the trailhead, the sky was (almost) blue and the sun shining. So we did what anyone else would have done in the same situation: we went to the Brewery.

The Yeti, Big Foot, and the bears

Every culture has its scary creatures. Usually, there live in the least hospitable area around, whether it's a deep forest or ominous mountains.The most popular are probably the Yeti believed to be wandering in the Himalayas, or its north american version, Big Foot.

Reading Wikipedia, I had a nice sample of some of them, and I hadn't heard of the majority of them, like the Akkarokamui, a gigantic fish-like octopus-like monster supposed to be in the Funka Bay in Japon, or the Brosno Dragon (West Russia), or the Maryland Goatman.

I think one of my favorites has supposedly been seen mostly in the Pyrenees, the mountains separating Spain from France: the Dahu.

There are various species of Dahu, on these pics, there's the Dahu dextrogyre (top) and the Dahu levogyre (bottom). The two uphill legs are shorter than the two downhill legs which means that they can only live on a mountain, and can only walk on it in one direction. The hunters technique is pretty easy: get one person at the bottom of the hill with a bag, send another one surprise the Dahu: the Dahu turns around and ... loses its balance and rolls down the hill, straight into the bag.

I have personally never seen one, despite many days of hiking in the Pyrenees.

But now, I wonder: does it mean anything?

 I read somewhere that there are at least 600 000 black bears in North America, more than 300 000 in the US. I've been living in Montana for almost 4 years - hiking as much as possible in the Bitterroot, went to Glacier, Yellowstone...

But then, I was worried and did not want to see any. 

I am always careful backcountry, hanging my food, not keeping smelly stuff in the tent, etc...

More and more the people I have been hiking with around my home have been telling me that as long as they are not in a National Park, they don't even bother: the bears associate humans to hunters and don't come close.

So when, two weeks ago, I joined friends to visit Yosemite, I thought that this time I would see bears! 

Well it was still not my moment... I loved the place, even though it was a little crowded... 

Unfortunately my friends were not so much into backpacking, so we just did a car-camping tour. Is it why the bears were still hiding from me?

We also went to Sequioa National Park (were the temperatures were much much higher - good thing the trees kept us in the shade - and again everywhere we could see warnings about bear and mountain lion sightings. 

After wandering on the Congress Trail, where I could not take a picture of an entire tree with my camera, we decided to go see the "jewel of the Sierras" (dixit John Muir): the Crescent Meadow. It looks like the perfect place for a bear, doesn't it?

I didn't see any. 

After we walked around the meadow, a woman jumped at us: "did you see it? did you see it?"

She was very excited. "No. I mean, I don't know. What are you talking about?"

"The bear cub! with his mum, just on the side of the trail you just took!"

My friends saw a black bear just outside of New York. My boss sees bear almost every time she goes to pick up huckleberries.

But for me, bears are like the Dahu, the Goatman or Bigfoot. Maybe it's not a bad thing after all?

I just like this one...

How it all began (part I)

My last weeks have been a little busy and I haven't found time to go out and play... Instead of talking about this time filled with way to much work, I will travel back in time to the days I blame for my addiction. Where and when it all began. 

Or should I say where and when I realized it had began? I don't think I showed any symptoms of the snow virus at first. I was lucky enough to have parents who loved skiing. Every winter we left the city to enjoy the cold and dry weather of the mountains. Since my parents wanted to ski and not just babysit, my siblings and I were going to the kindergarten-ski school all day. I don't remember particularly enjoying these times. I remember being cold and tired, not wanting to carry my skis that were too heavy and would not want to stay together! I did not like the ski instructor because she was not taking care of me more than of the other kids. I did not like having lunch there, because they were serving spinach and broccoli... 

Well I guess I learned how to ski... And started dreaming of being the next world champion. But you have talent or you don't, and champions need talent. I never became one... but little by little my obsession with mountains, speed and snow settled in my mind. I was still the occasional skier, enjoying groomed slopes and hard and heavy skis - the longer, the faster, the better - when I decided that winter was not enough and I could go skiing on glaciers in the summer too. The first trip was planned, August 1996, French Alps. A friend was supposed to come along. However, as the departure day approached, my friend started talking about weird stuff, like hiking up the mountain instead of taking a lift, walking on glacier or snow... Walking in the snow!!!! Why would someone do that! Take your skis and ski down! If it's not downhill, it's not worth it!

Somehow, though, I ended up agreeing to try that kind of stuff that summer instead of going skiing... So, August 1996, French Alps, still, but instead of l'Alpe d'Huez (you might have heard of the place if you follow the Tour de France), it was Chamonix, Argentiere and the Mont Blanc range. 

The scenery was one of the most spectacular I have seen so far. 

[I did not take any of the pictures published in this post - I uploaded them from internet but could not find author info]

The villages are clustered at the deep bottom of the valley, surrounded by giants of rock and ice. There was even a little touch of creepiness perfect for someone in her late teenage years. 

There I was taught how to use an ice axe and crampons, how to tie knots and belay, and how tiring this whole deal is.

I was never an athlete, and not exactly what you would call fit at that time. I was telling my teachers that I did not have breakfast in the morning not to have to run at school and my exercise was limited to horseback riding and swimming every once in a while. I suffered a lot during that week, just trying to keep up with the group. Just getting to the glacier was exhausting. But once on it, it was like discovering a new world. I turned out to be OK at doing this stuff and really liked it. And then, there was this:

This is the Little Aiguille Verte, 11522ft (3512m) and my first contact with the real stuff. The climb was easy (well yes, I was tired and always behind, but it was not technical) and even better, the first part was in a cable car. But I could not describe the satisfaction I felt that day. I thought that if I worked for it, I could probably do ANYTHING and go ANYWHERE one day.

Going down was just fantastic, from the moraine to the bed of the glacier along scary ledges... 

The week ended with a 2 day trip in the mountain (the Tete Blanche was the name of our summit goal), with a night in the refuge Albert Ier. 

This is what the Lonely Planet guide says about the place:

"Precariously perched atop a scraggy crag at an impressive altitude of 2706m, this cliffhanger of a mountain refuge - or rather the stunning veiws it sports - cannot fail to impress".

This was the first of many trips to a hut, the first night in a 24-person bedroom, with the smells and noises it involves, the first time I got up at 4am to go climb a mountain, the first time I walked in the snow with only my headlamp to show me where to step, and the first time I saw the sun rise on a mineral desert, the pink shade painting peak after peak. That day I knew something changed in me and that it would shape the rest of my life.