Back in January, 2009, on the 18th day of that month, I went on my first (real) ski tour ever. The goal was Mount Arrowsmith on Vancouver Island. My notes from my log are as follows: “skinned up the road, had lunch in the sun, skied down, big blisters, truck high centred and stuck for 2 hrs!” I still had fun, and even tried ski touring again! Fast forward 8 years, and I think I may even know what I am doing, with several trips to Vancouver Island destinations in the log book.
With a decent spring snow pack, this Saturday (22 April 2017) seemed like the perfect time to try Arrowsmith again. Things went much better than the first try in 2009! The truck didn’t get stuck, and we actually made it into the alpine. I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story!
The start of the snow. On my 2009 trip to this location we didn’t even get this far on skis!
Best parking spot in the lot!
Andy smiling on the climb up. Right after I took this photo I traversed through a rock band and the snow slid out from under me. I ended up at the base of the tree visible just to the right of Andy’s pack.
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Arrowsmith is long. Took me two photos to get it all! The clump of tress in the centre-right of the left photo is the same as in the far left of the right photo.
Here’s the little ridge we skied down. The weather was closing in so we didn’t really want to head any higher, and the snow quality wasn’t worth doing laps. Would come back here – this is about 18 turns long and would be great to ski in good snow conditions.
Here’s our route thanks to my GPS watch. We ascended by the route at the top of the map, went south along the ridge, and then descended back to our climbing route.
Elevation over time. We climbed at a steady pace, and then went down fast! This shows elevation in white and speed in blue!!