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
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