chris volkart mountain life: February 2011

Well its been a long time...too much time, however i have some excuses to offer you! Last time i posted i was heading off for some heli-accessed ski touring. We had an amazing week with decent snow stability and lots of the wonderful white stuff! Upon arriving back in kamloops i almost immediately slipped on my driveway and took a big fall smashing my computer to bits! For the next few weeks i worked hard to try to get a new computer sent to me and after the first one getting lost in the mail i finally have a computer again!!! I am finished school and have only one final assignment to complete before i am done with all the classroom stuff. I have three more courses left which are my CSIA ski instructor course, my avalanche level 1 and my expedition. The biggest news since i last posted is that i have a job for the summer! I will be guiding at COE (http://www.coe.ca/) a climbing/mountaineering/skiing/kayaking guiding outfit based out of nordeg, alberta! I have to take my ACMG top rope instructor course in may to get the job but im not too worried! So anyways on to whats been going on in the mountains for me in the past month!

My ski tour course was amazing! We drove to golden and slept in a hotel in town. We woke up early to catch our flight from the Golden Alpine Holidays(http://www.goldenalpineholidays.com/) staging area outside of town. We got picked up in a helicopter and quickly flew into some untouched back country terrain in the northern Selkirk's based out of their sunrise lodge. The week went well starting with some companion rescue practice and moving on to snow science work only to end with what we all get out there to do....turns in deep powder! The snow was deep and we found good terrain with relatively good stability though we were watching it closely throughout the week. Some highlights of the week include building an igloo and planning an epic last day covering lots of terrain and skiing some really good lines! The low point of my week was not getting enough water the night we slept in our igloos and getting some pretty severe dehydration...not a fun experience but a great learning about what to watch out for when dealing with dehydration. Other than that it was a lot of route finding and track setting practice, lots of snowpack discussion and most of all good turns! We got to summit the highest peak in the area, mount capola at 2632m.

After ski touring it was back to school for a couple weeks sitting in the class dreaming about the white stuff while trying to get through all our projects. We got a week off when half our class headed out on the first section of avy 1. I got out skiing at sunpeaks practicing my skiing technique preparing for my ski instructor course! For those of you that don't know me im a splitboarder historically but getting back on skis for the first time in probably 15 or so years! A couple of us got out ice climbing in that week off as well! After a week of homework skiing and climbing it was back to school for our final week! After writing my final there were only a couple full days of finishing my final project for one class and finally freedom! I went skiing yesterday but otherwise ive just been relaxing after a slightly stressful last few days of class! So to make up for not posting for a while, here is a big dump of photos! I just want to encourage those of you who enjoy seeing what im up to to sign up to be a follower of my blog!