Getting there is half the fun

Storm the Wall meets Eurotrash!!

I'll be blunt, this is ALL copied from Bob's blog because I'm too lazy right now! Thanks Bob!

Last night we found out that we made it to the campus wide men's finals for Storm the Wall. Looking at teams' race times we knew we will be bearing up from the rear. Since we improved our race time significantly last time we were pretty happy. Storming for the 3rd time just means we're getting our money worth. After a short discussion we decided to storm the wall Wue Crew style by dressing up like Eurotrash and have some stupid fun!!!

Let's just say Eurotrash isn't the prettiest sight of it all. The whole time we saw bunch ppl pointing and giggling behind our backs. While waiting for Evan and Pete to get to the wall we thought it would be awesome if we get the DJ to play the Numa Numa song, which was ridiculously popular when we were in Europe. Because the chaos going on we never managed to do that. However, just before Pete came the DJ started playing Numa Numa!!! Colin, Matt, and Evan then did the airplane dance while going to the wall! For mens' final the last team member had to get up the wall without anyone coming around the help him. We've never managed to do that during our wall clinic. Somehow we managed to get Matt over the wall very quickly in style. It was pretty impressive!

We finished the race in 15 mins but unfortunately got disqualified. There is a rule that only two team members can be at the top of the wall at one time. Matt was the last person to climb over and when he was on the top we had three guys on the wall, one too many.

We went down in UBC REC history as quite possible the worst dressed. The pics will tell the story. You've been warned, they're not pretty.

Posted by Evan at 12:07 AM

Storm the Wall 2006

It's already the end of the year and that means Storm time!! (also many missed classes and much beer consumed) For the third straight year we have a few Fizz teams going strong.

This year we are team Wue Crew, named after our Wu Crew of 2004 from Wuerzburg, Germany where Colin, Peter and I lived together and much fun was had. Bob was up in Hannover during the same time and both he and Matt (all the way from Canada) came to visit, thus they are honorary members!
Team Members: Evan Morris, Matt Harriman, Peter Eugster, Colin Enderud, Bob Lai

Let's steal some stuff from Bob's blog!:
What's Storm the Wall? Storm the Wall is a 5-person relay event. 1 person swims for 225 yards, 1 person sprints for 450 meters, 1 person bikes for 2.8 km, 1 person runs for 1 km. Then finally all 5 members of the team has to climb over a 12-FOOT wall.




Here's us climbing the wall yesterday:

Posted by Evan at 7:49 PM

Night out at the Kingshead

Beer + 1AM + Kits Beach + Water + 1 crazy idea = wet in weird places + Embarrassment!
Good times! but 'nuff said for now. (no, it's not as it looks!)

Posted by Evan at 12:17 AM

Zoa Peak day trip!

In trying to keep a good thing going me, Clint, Ellen, Bram and Ben headed out to Zoa peak for my third weekend in a row skiing. We left Saturday night and camped just Falls Lake 'road' by the Coquihalla summit. Two lessons were (re)learned that night: don't forget your skins and don't go camping with a leading thermarest. Here are the consequences:
1. Ellen forgot her skins so in the morning Clint drove her down to Hope at 6:30am. We spent all night thinking of "interesting" things to do in hope, such as reading all the magazines in the 7-11 news rack, getting drunk at 7am, or learning how to chainsaw carve in the chainsaw capital of Canada. In fact we came up with such an exhaustive list that we thought Ellen wouldn't have enough time to do them all so instead she caught a bus back to Vancouver after only an hour in Hope. What a pity.
2. Just because a week went by doesn't mean my thermarest would have headed itself from the previous weekend. Thus due to laziness in not patching it another very cold night was spent sleeping on the wonderful heatsink that is a thin layer of nylon on top of cold snow. Note to self: must fix thermarest this time!

So it was after eating breakfast on the side of the highway we started skiing at 9am. In under 2 hours we reached the peak of Zoa by following a lone skier who headed out minutes before us breaking trail in the fresh 10cm that fell overnight.

Skiing along the ridge to Zoa. This is the only real good picture before the weather ousted my photography skills rendering the other pictures mono-tint grey.


After just 2 runs it was time for lunch. Once again my perpetual laziness prevented me from going shopping so I thought this was a good occasion to break out a package of US army rations I had been holding on to for a long time. But more on this in another post when I will dive deep into the wonders of army issue bread and crackers.

mmmmm so yummy!


The afternoon was spent tracking up the powder in some really nice skiing. Different aspects yielded different results but we soon found the sweet spot where face shots and wipeouts were abundant.

Ben skiing: (wait I lied, one decent pic)


And now the many shades of greys...Bram below our lines down:


Me trying to get some air off a buried tree (it was a pretty big bump!)


...and the aftermath...a big huge crater for the landing!


Clint showing some style and putting me to shame (snowboarding is easier right, right?)


Last run of the day, Clint chose to stay on high ground....here's the rest of us coming back up to the ridge:


Soon we were all knackered and it was time to head home:( The Coquihalla highway below.


Bram, Ben and Clint with Thar behind during a break in the clouds on the way down:


Back at the car we noticed some interesting signs we missed the night before!


The best sign ever!


Packing up and out...

Posted by Evan at 9:07 PM

So I was trying to find my Nuclear Physics prof's website by googling his name....looks like he has a pretty famous name!:
1. Javed Iqbal - A serial killer from Lahore
2. Javed Iqbal - Scholar, Justice and Muhammad Iqbal's son
3. Javed Iqbal - Theoretical Nuclear Physicist, Director of Science Co-op
Can you guess which one he is?

---

On another note, how do pictures like THIS get out?! Check Matt's page on March 22 for the embarrassment.

Posted by Evan at 7:53 PM

Brew Hut - VOC Trail Marking Trip

Putting the skool work on hold for another week I went with 12 other VOCers to mark the new winter ski route into Brew Hut. Actually we were originally 15, but we couldn't find one girl in Vancouver and had to abandon her after 30 minutes of searching. And another girl turned back 2 hours into the hike to hitch back to Van, which is another story in itself!

Brew Hut was built by the VOC this past summer and the old winter route in is supposedly super dangerous so Scott set up a new route via Roe Creek. After meeting at the trailhead Scott and Tim shuttled people as far as their 4x4s would go up the snowy road. Then we started hiking and skiing up a long logging road used by a Cat skiing operation. A Cat passed us on the way up with the occupants taking photos of us "hardcore backcountry travellers"! Almost 2 hours later we reached the turnoff up a steep abandoned logging road. Scott broke the trail.

Looking back down the small logging road at the others coming up:


Soon we turned off into the forest and started the marking process. We split up into 3 groups of 4, once again with Scott breaking trail out front. Leapfrogging up the trail, each group would mark a section and then pass the next group. It was surprisingly a lot of fun! We put little orange reflectors on trees ever 20 meters or so, cutting branches as needed, which was a lot sometimes. I think we all overestimated the pace at which we could mark, the pace was pretty slow. But we all got a good section of the trail done before most people headed up to the hut at around 3:30pm. Tim, Christian, Reuben and I stayed back and finished marking the rest of the trail up to the lake making it to the hut just as the sun was setting around 6:45. We arrived super tired but it was really nice of Marko and the others to have some hot water for tea all ready for us!

Tim cutting the snow-encrusted branches off a tree in preparation to place a marker:


In the spirit of St. Patrick's day I lugged 2 large cans of Guinness up with me and every drop was worth it. Highly recommended on every trip!

Somehow with all the saws and cutters and tree branches involved in the marking process I popped my thermarest, so it was the second trip in a row spent sleeping pretty much on plywood. Eventually I'll figure this sleeping thing out.

Greta and Reuben in front of Brew Hut Sunday morning. Can you believe 12 people can sleep in the upstairs of this?!


With the trail marking basically done Sunday was spent having some fun! Aiden, Tim and Scott went out skiing super early, which left the rest of us to go climb Mt. Brew, a small summit (1757m) just north of the hut.

Some of us standing in front of our objective:


The route up crossed one scary-ish slope above some cliffs and then climbed for a bit up through snow covered alpine trees. Both the skiers and the snowshoers had to carry their chosen methods of travel up the peak.

Marc climbing up through the trees:


Less than 30 minutes from leaving the hut we "summited"!


Upsidedown on the top: Me and Greta doing a hand stand on top of Mount Brew. One of my favourite pics!:


We took a slightly steeper route down off of the peak wanting to avoid a potential avalanche slope. But Artem and I managed to ski the whole way down! (if you could call it skiing - it was more of a controlled fall with jumps over dropoffs)

Back at the hut it was only 10:30 so Christian, Artem and I went for a ski while the others snowshoed around. Directly from the hut you could ski down a gully about 330meters to a small lake. We followed Tim, Scott and Aiden's lines figuring they wouldn't lead off a cliff. The skiing was stellar - I think THE best run I've ever had! Ski resorts have nothing on untracked backcountry powder!

This is about 1/3 of the slope we came down. My line is middle-left one, Artem's is the one to the right with longer turns, and Christian's is the large sweeping one that looks like an uptrack.


We ate lunch in the bottom of the giant bowl. Christian lost his shovel handle on the way down so we started up the gully to get it but soon heard the screams of Scott from the forest above telling us we were skiing up into our doom, or at least potentially. So instead we followed their nice skin track up through the forest into the alpine. It took us an hour to get back up to the hut.

What goes down must come up! Hard work:


Back at the hut the small battalion of snowshoers was preparing to leave to get a head start on us going down. Here they are marching off into the distance:


With a few hours of daylight left Tim, Scott, Aiden and I went for one more run down the gully! Christian didn't come because he broke his tele binding on his second turn into the bowl, but more on that later.

Tim matching our lines down!


A 'quick' and 'painless' (cough) 40 minute sprint brought us back up to the hut.


After packing up we undertook the matter of Christian's bindings. A quick fix meant strapping his foot to his ski, which made for a very interesting trip down.

Leaving the hut with Blacktusk and Mt. Garibaldi in the distance:


Half way down the trail the straps broke on Christian's makeshift 'binding' so he ended up walking down through the forest which was actually easier and faster than skiing as the snow was a horrid sun crust that made for difficult skiing.

The steep logging road leading down to the Cat track was impossible to ski and had a huge drop off on the left - extremely scary. Tim was the first to crash with a nice faceplant which left him with goosebumps on his forehead. Not wanting to feel left out I soon faceplanted as well into the ice and got a nice bleeding nose! From there I had enough and carried my skies down to the cat track trailing blood behind. Another super icy and super scary survival ski down the cat track brought us eventually to the cars.

Back in Squamish we continued the 'tradition' of going to the brew pub, fitting, since we were at Brew Hut and climbed Mt. Brew! Good food and good beer as always, concluding another awesome trip! They seem to always be getting better and better!

And here's a shot of the whole crew of 13: Aiden, Marc, Artem, Kirsten, Yuri, me, Reuben, Sebastian, Marko, Scott, Tim, Christian, & Greta.

Posted by Evan at 11:27 PM

Remember the show Cops?! Here's a really well done Star Wars parody. (only funny if you used to watch Cops)

Once again see y'all Monday, heading to Brew Hut for the weeknd!...

Posted by Evan at 12:10 AM

Pictures from last weekend's trip to Marriot Basin are up in the gallery!

Posted by Evan at 7:20 PM

Went out for dinner to the Banana Leaf and then to the Wolf and Hound for some beers, live music, and some pretty bad 'Irish' dancing by us. Puttin' the school work on hold for another night. Loads of fun!

Going clockwise: Kim, Greta, me, Julie, Andrew, Mike, Fokko, Kyttle and Max.

Posted by Evan at 10:40 AM

Marrit Basin/Wendy Thompson Hut

In an effort to practise what we learned in Avy school, and also to get out skiing of course, Bram, Clint, Thomas and I planned a trip up to Marriot Basin for the weekend. Being our first real self-planned trip it went fairly well. The choice of weekend couldn't have been better either: low avalanche danger and some of the best powder I have ever skied!!

Bram, Thomas and Clint drove up thursday night past Pemberton and camped at the side of the Duffey Lake highway so they could get a headstart on the powder Friday. I drove up with Miranda and Liz at a (not so) bright and early 5am Saturday morning. After driving, skinning up and a leisurely ski in we made it to the hut at 1pm to find the guys just returning from a morning trip out.

Miranda on the trail to the hut:


Looking back down the trail at Liz and Miranda with some unnamed peaks lining the valley:


After a quick rest and lunch at the hut the 6 of us headed further up the valley sides for some skiing.

The group eating lunch in front of the Wendy Thompson Hut:


The hut is located at the end of a valley with steep sides that make for great skiing. This is a pic of one of the slopes we skied up then down. Our skin track is the switchbacks on the left and the tracks coming down are Clint, Thomas and Bram's from the morning. Some pretty sweet skiing!


Thomas, Bram and Liz at the top of the valley deskining. Mt Rohr is the mountain in the middle, surrounded by unnamed peaks:


A great afternoon of skiing culminated with some nice dinner followed by schnapps in a very crowded hut. The hut 'holds' 16 people, but is way larger than that. I think there were around 20 people there in all, with me being the youngest! The hut is extremely nice and cosy.

Normally it would have been an extremely nice and cosy night's sleep, but somehow I managed to roll off of my thermarest and spent the whole night freezing on the plywood floor. But in a semi-sleeping state I didn't realize this until 6am and we got up at 6:30! Oh well, 2 nights with less than 4 hours of sleep never hurt anyone.

Sunday we left early in minus 13 temperatures to go climb Mt Rohr, or so we thought. Heading halfway back down the trail we came to the approximate point where you have to start climbing the valley walls up through the forest. We jettisoned our unneeded gear such as sleeping bags and stoves in the middle of the forest and started up through the trees.

Shedding excess gear:


Before long we came to 2 options: either go up the super steep hill or go around it. After an argument we 'decided' to go up the super steep hill following some skin tracks. Well the skin tracks led us first in the wrong direction, then back across the hill and the finally back down to up part of the valley I wanted to go in the first place, wasting an hour. From here on we had to break our own trail in the deep powder. Wanting to avoid an avalanche slope our group 'made' another bad decision of trying to go up an impossibly steep slope through "the forest from hell". This fatal mistake took us three times as long to reach this lake we were aiming for, but finally we made it after much agony and cursing.

Clint and I at the unnamed lake:


Looking up the lake up our objective, Mt Rohr, the white mass to the left. Strangely enough we found this ski track of one lone skier who came down from the slopes above. We never could figure out how he got up there.


At this point it was pretty obvious we weren't going to make the summit another 600 meters above us so we climbed a small hill North of the lake which gave us a good view of the Marriot basin/valley from which we came. The hut is located roughly at the tree line below the pointy peak at the end of the valley. Saturday we skied up the slopes at the top of the photo.


Our day's efforts weren't all in vain as we were at a pretty good elevation and had to drop back into the valley. So after digging a snow pit which yielded reassuring results we hit the slopes with renewed vigour after being defeated. Once again the conditions were bomber, yielding the best powder I've ever skied: light, fluffy and deep! This is one of the slopes we came down. Miranda is the skier, and Liz is the small dot in the middle sitting down.


After tramping around in the forest for a while we found our gear, repacked and headed down the hills though dense forest - not the easiest thing to do with an overnight pack on. Much "turtling" was involved!

Completely beat after skiing for 9.5 hours in -7C we made is back to the car at 5:30 just as the sun was going behind the mountains. Not surprisingly we were the last cars at the trailhead.


Back in Pemberton we went to the only restaurant we could find, which happened to be a fairly swank place that looked like it belonged in Whistler. The food was damn good. Finally after a long drive we arrived back home at a modest 11:30pm completely wasted from the weekend. Depending how you look at it, it was another successful trip completed, and always loads of fun!!

Posted by Evan at 10:50 PM