PaulB

I thought some hot Hope chicks might come knocking on the door and ask what the full crotch zipper was all about. BTW, "Itzza Pizza" makes good ones, and the waitresses (who are sisters) are cute.

Climb: Hope-Cruel Pools Date of Climb: 1/9/2005 Trip Report: WCI1 describes Cruel Pools as a three pitch Grade 3. Turns out its a whole lot more! From the parking area, easy cramponing up the frozen drainage led to a couple short steps which were easily soloed to the base of a narrow, ice choked gully, where we broke out the ropes and started our adventure. Wes Maedel leading P1 Gary Shorthouse leading P2 Wes seconding P4 Jordop seconding P4 Rapelling from highpoint on P7 (could be P8, I lost track) I'd give this pitch a 3+/4-, but we didn't top out as the last 10 feet were a very thin shell of ice over a gushing torrent of water. My attempt to surpass this resulted in a gaping hole in the shell and I had no desire to take a bath so I threw in a belay and brought the others up. It looked like there might even be another pitch above this one. This is a fantastic moderate route with pretty much continuous climbing and only one "slog" pitch. All in all it made for a great outing. Four of us climbing in two teams were about 9 hours car-to-car. If we'd known it was going to be an all day affair we would have climbed the lower pitches faster, but we thought it was only going to take us a couple of hours. Gear Notes: Double ropes, slings/cord for rap anchors, headlamp Approach Notes: Follow WCI directions to parking area, start hiking up obvious drainage. The Swiss Chalet motel in Hope is our recommended accomodation!

If you're mostly going to be carving inbounds, go smaller to get the most control. If you'll mostly be touring for turns in the backcountry, go larger to get some comfort.

It's a nice day out in the summer if you want to stretch your legs and get up high without much effort. The summit provides great views across Garibaldi Park.

People who are good at making skis aren't necessarily good at running a business. You can read all about it here.

The skis are made at a factory in Tunisia owned buy a European ski company. There was a good discussion on TTips as to what company that was, but the name escapes me at the moment. TTips lost their entire message database a month or so ago so I can't look it up.

Did you follow the summer trail to the lake, or was there enough snow to head straight up from the parking area?

In the past, many so called tele skis were made in the same molds as alpine skis, but with a lay up that gave them a softer flex. This is probably still true for some skis (dunno which ones) but with tele skiers becoming much more agressive in recent years, the demand for soft skis has lessened. You'll see lots of tele skiers ripping it up on super stiff alpine boards. These days, I'd say the major difference between alpine and tele/rando skis for backcountry use is weight. As mentioned above, its also mostly marketing. Take the new G3 skis for example. G3 is mostly a tele-centric company, but it would have been a poor business decision for them to introduce "tele only" skis since the market is so small. Instead, they've marketed them as having been designed for both tele and randonee use, even though the primary designer (Paul Parker of Tua fame) is well known for his tele skis. The best advice I've heard is to mount whatever binding you like onto whatever ski you like, and just give 'er!

Feb. 11-13. Heard there might be clinics with Sean Isaac, but dunno if that's for sure or not. I've recently been informed that a "formal" (i.e. sponsored) ice fest isn't gonna happen this year, but that another "Gathering" may be in the cards.

I have a hardly used pair of the red/blue model that I'd be happy to sell. Probably size 9, would have to dig them out of the gear bin to check. If anyone's interested, PM me.

You can "camp" in the Singing Pass overnight parking area in Lot 4. As long as you're sleeping in your vehicle, I don't think anyone will bother you.

We were able to drive about 9km from the highway, leaving a 5km ski into the basin. Could probably have gone a bit farther if we had put chains on. The road bed was in good shape up to the switchback across the Sumallo, but beyond that it deteriorates and is getting overgrown.

Interesting....I had my liners molded at the Intuiton office and they didn't use any toe caps.

They fixed this..... by getting rid of the pockets.

A trip through any lift line at Whistler will confirm that observation. Dead birds all over the place!

This has been recently discussed here (scroll to the bottom) on Climb Eastern Canada by some folks who are planning a trip for next summer and have researched the access options.

Dunno which model it was, but I was looking at an Arc'Teryx insulated jacket a few weeks ago. First time I'd seen some form of GoreTex used with a synthetic insulation. In any case, the CDN$700 pricetag ensured that my interest in it was only momentary.

Yeah, a friend of mine picked up two Giro helmets in Whistler this summer for something like 50% off.

I used to sharpen after every day out, but now I mostly just do touch ups after I've hit some rock. If I was going to climb some cold, brittle ice I'd take the time to make sure they were nicely tuned. This happened on the crux pitch of Night'N'Gale last winter, about a half inch off the tip: Luckily, I was seconding, and the ice was soft, but it was a lot of work to get the "stub" planted securely.

MEC has some cheap helmets, but they aren't the quality of Giro IMO. Depending on how you're coming into the city, it might be easiest to stop in North Vancouver on your way to Whistler, unless you really want to go downtown. Good ski shops in North Van are Northshore Ski & Board, Westside Sport & Ski, Destination Ski and The Boardroom. Northside Ski & Board and the Boardroom are the closest to the highway and easy to find on Lonsdale Ave. Bigger chain stores that would have good selection are Coast Mountain Sports & SportChek, both of which are also in North Van. I'd guess that buying a helmet in Whistler will add $20 or so to the price, but you might get a deal if someone's still got old stock from last year.

The older Silvretta 404s will do the job, and should be easy to find fairly cheap.

I have a Garmin GPS 12 (old school, but durable) and recently picked up a Garmin Geko 201 (more memory and much smaller). Both are good units if you want a simple GPS that will tell you where you are, track where you've been, and let you download/upload data from your PC. I've never looked at any of the units with built in map databases, mostly 'cause I don't think they'd be very useful. I'd rather carry a paper map.

I'm no doctor, but I believe it's simply due to blood moving back into vessels which have constricted due to the cold, or even began freezing slightly (mild frostbite).

Another vote for the Michelin LTX M/S. They're great on the highway, and do alright on typical muddy/snow covered logging and forestry roads in BC. I've got close to 100k km (5+ years) with them on my Pathfinder, and expect that they should last through to next fall.

While I'm sure that some Canadians are passing on these values to their kids, I wouldn't say that it's representative of the country as a whole. The majority of people are willing to work to earn a living, without abusing the social safety net. Barring an unexpected job loss, I'll pay far more into the system than I'll ever get out of it, but if I ever lose my job, it won't bother me a bit to line up and collect the benefits I've paid for.