Archive for the 'Sunday Photo' Category

Page 2 of 2

Sunday Photo – Ben Goes into a Crevasse

Published on July 27, 2008 in Sunday Photo. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Part of the reason I like this photo so much is that it had a happy ending, but it could easily have gone the other way.

This incident took place during a 2007 trip up to the Wrangell-St.Elias Mountains with Ben Ditto and Grant Guise.  We knew there were crevasses on the glaciers, but once we started climbing up a rocky ridgeline, we decided to leave the ropes and glacier gear behind.

Once we reached the top, Grant and I skied one line while Ben shot some photos, then disappeared behind a knoll to presumably ski an adjacent line.  He was gone a while, when suddenly the Motorola Radio came to life with Ben saying “I’m hanging upside down in a crevasse and I’m going to die!”

We asked if he was kidding, to which he emphatically said “NO” and we started running back up the 750′ hill to get him, which took about 20 minutes.  Once we got to the ridge, we could see a shallow depression (the snowbridge), with a set of ski tracks going right into it, then a set of black bases sticking straight up in the air!

We had to cross the bridge ourselves to get to Ben and then fashion an emergency rescue out of a picket and ice axe (still visible stuck into the lower lip of the crevasse) which we tossed down to Ben, who then pulled himself up to the point where we could help yard him out. 

On the way up the slope to get him, Ben, being the photographer, called us on the radio and asked “Take a photo, then yank me out!”  When we got there, we were so dismayed that we forgot about the photo until afterward.

Here Ben is screaming in a mixture of pain as the blood flows back into his feet and happiness at being out of the dark hole.  As a side-note, when he first fell in he was held by a single Dynafit toepiece!

______________________
For 15% off on a Black Raven Ice tool like the one used to pull Ben out, from Backcountry.com, click the photo below… 

Sunday Photo – Orient Express, Denali

Published on July 20, 2008 in Sunday Photo. 1 Comment Tags: , .

This is one of those cases where the actual skiing was crap, but the location was so amazing it didn’t matter.

Doug Byerly skiing the Orient Express on Denali (Mt. McKinley) around 10:30 at night. 1995
Doug Byerly skiing the Orient Express on Denali (Mt. McKinley) around 10:30 at night. 1995

Having never skied above 11,000′, Mark Holbrook and I decided it would be a good idea to try skiing Denali (20,320′) for some reason.  We made it to the 14,300′ camp (visible in the basin below right at the sun/shadow line) and within a day started up the Upper West Rib for an acclimatizing hike.  We didn’t expect to get far, but were also joined by Doug Byerly, two climbers from Colorado and two Park Rangers who were looking for some lost Spanish climbers.  Much to my surprise, we ended up making it a lot higher than I ever would have guessed.  The Rangers and Mark turned back at around 17,000′ while Doug, the two Coloradans and I continued on.

Just as we were about to crest an area called “The Football Field” we came across the lost Spanish climbers huddled in their tent.  It was a grim scene and all the wanted was “rescue, rescue” – no food, water or anything else.  Doug and I decided to ski down the way we had come up while the two Colorado climbers were going to descend the Messner Couloir.  The first group to the bottom would start the rescue.

Because we were on a mission, we didn’t have a lot of time to think about the skiing, snow quality or the fact that this face was named the Orient Express in honor of all of the Asians who had fallen to their death down it while trying to take a short-cut off the peak.  But at one point, I was able to snap a few photos.

As a trivia note, Doug is skiing with $5 poles he got from a rental shop on the extended loan program.  :)

______________________
For 15% off on non-rental Black Diamon Carbon Fiber pole from Backcountry.com, click the photo below…

 

Sunday Photo – Deepest Snow I’ve Ever Skied

Published on July 6, 2008 in Sunday Photo. 0 Comments Tags: , .

When skiing around with a new group of friends on an extra deep powder day, the topic always turns to “What’s the deepest snow you have ever skied?”  For me, it was an outing to the Ruby Mountains in Nevada with Mark Holbrook the late 1990′s.

Neck Deep in the Ruby\'s.

Following a tip that there was an incredible unskied couloir right off the road, we drove from Salt Lake City to Elko, spent the night and easily found the couloir the next day. (We later found out it had not only been skied many times, but was named “Terminal Cancer.”) It had snowed a bit the day before, but was only about 6″ deep on the initial apron.  As we got higher into the chute, the walls from the side had sluffed all of their snow into the narrow gully such that it got deeper with every step.  About halfway up the chute we wallowing in thigh deep powder and kept thinking it couldn’t get any deeper, but it did.

As we had driven all the way just for this chute and were within 500′ of the top, we kept going, but it meant we had to break out the shovels and trench our way up the couloir.  At the point I took this photo, the snow was about 60″ deep and probably in the 5-6% density range. Pure fluff!

The skiing down was surreal.  We were worried about hitting the trench, but the snow sluffed and filled it all in so we didn’t even feel it.  The only time you could see anything was for a moment in between turns, then you’d sink back in, not just for a face-shot, but to be completely submerged.  We were so deep in the snow that we couldn’t go very fast, which led to a dreamy slo-mo descent down the orange-lichen lined walls of Terminal Cancer.

________________________
15% off Smith Phenom Spherical Goggles, for when the going gets too deep, at Backcountry.com

Sunday Photo – Tasman Glacier Icefall, New Zealand

Published on June 29, 2008 in Sunday Photo. 0 Comments Tags: , .

This classic photo by Chris Figenshau has a funny background to it.

Wandering through the icefall

Steve Romeo, Chris Figenshau and I flew down to New Zealand to do some skiing in the Mt. Cook National Park with Kiwi local, Grant Guise.  We were flown into the Tasman Saddle hut and as we were shuttling our gear to the hut, a bag of pasta slipped out and shot down a blind couloir.  It wasn’t life-threatening, but later Grant and I skied down below the hut to look for it and found the couloir got steeper and steeper, then ended in a giant open maw of a crevasse!  The pasta was one with the glacier.

On the way back up to the hut, Grant and I decided to go right through the icefall as it was fairly short and we had ropes and plenty of time.  Chris was able to watch us from the top, and being a photographer, took a bunch of photos, but didn’t quite get what he was looking for, so he asked if all of us might want to do it again, which we did.  This time we had radios, so Chris was able to direct us through an outrageous path up the center of the icefall which we probably never would have found without his bird’s-eye view.  He shot this photo looking down from the hut, which is perched on a rock outcropping and falls away 100′s of feet on three sides.

________________________
15% off an Ibex “Mollie” jacket made with Merino Wool from New Zealand at Backcountry.com

Sunday Photo – Baffin Island Iceberg Camp

Published on June 22, 2008 in Sunday Photo. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .
Editors Note: Sundays are meant for skiing, climbing, riding and almost anything but sitting in front of a computer.  Still, the Internet never sleeps and Sunday’s are a good time for ski mountaineering photos and the story behind them.

Baffin Island Iceberg Camp – 2002

Brad Barlage booting up the Model T couloir. Baffin Island

While watching a Mike Libecki slideshow on Big Wall climbing in Baffin Island, I kept catching glimpses of tasty looking couloirs in the background of scenic photos and wondered if they were skiable.  As it turned out, most of the descents off of the huge vertical walls were by walking/sliding down nearby couloirs.  When I asked another skier/climber who had been to Baffin how many of these couloirs there were in the area, he said “Oh God! Hundreds!”  That was all the info needed to start planning a trip to the area.

In 2002, Brad Barlage and I spent four weeks in the Sam Ford Fjord area of Baffin Island doing some of the best skiing of our lives.  In this photo, we had moved camp to an area with 3-4 chutes in it and found a melted out iceberg which had drifted over from Greenland.  It’s good to camp near icebergs as they are a source of clean water for melting, but in this case, we were worried about an avalanche coming down the couloir and nailing the berg like a perfect catcher’s mitt, burying us in the process.

In the end, it was just too cool a campsite to pass up and the snow was stable enough that we spent two nights camped there.  At one point, some of the berg itself calved off and almost hit Brad, but aside from that, it was excellent.

 ________________________
15% off aluminum crampons perfect for booting up Baffin couloirs from Backcountry.com