chris volkart mountain life

Well ice season is close to being over here. Me and sean decided to make one last attempt at ice climbing today. We had big plans to spend the two days starting by climbing a mellow route as a warm up and moving on to one of the biggest routes in the area on monday. We woke up early this morning and drove out past cache creek to a route called energizer. There was alot of snow last night and we arrived in coolish conditions but straight from the car conditions felt a bit on the variable side of things. We arrived at the base of two ice choked gullies and decided to give the right one a try not knowing exactly which route was which. After two moderate pitches we came to the base of a grade 4-5 curtain that looked great but as we were planning on soloing our route we decided to take a pass as we didnt have the proper equipment. We down climbed and rappelled out of that gully and started up the second gully. The ice was different right off the bat...it was a mix of snow and ice we call "snice" which meant that every time we swung our axes we got good sticks but we were a little concerned that the ice was delaminating from the rock behind it. We climbed pitch after pitch without needing to rope up at all until we came to a section where the ice had fully delaminated from the rock and we were left with a rock face with a bit of ice on top. After attempting an alternate 3rd class line up some of the most crumbly loose rock ive seen sean pulled off a big chunk of rock and got it right in his face and after some minor first aid we decided to bail....until i spotted a possible line further right of the ice. I gave it a go and found a moderate but loose line that brought us to the top of the pitch with the ice missing. We continued on some more moderate pitches and one short but vertical pitch until we got to a steep pillar pitch that had broken off and feeling that we had a good day, we made the call to turn around. After an hour or so of rappelling and down climbing we were back at the car smiles on our face ready to head home!

The first pitch of the day(turned out to be the wrong route)

sean following

sean climbing up behind the pillar in the next photo

the last pitch of happy boy...we didnt come prepared to climb this

the first pitch of Energizer

really amazing rock features on this route

endless moderate ice

beautiful terrain around this area

interesting ice formations on the branches

beginning the downclimb

this is as far as we made it...we could see all the debris from the pillar that used to be there

the damage to seans nose

Well the conditions certainly meant that it is too warm here currently for good climbing, but we are going to try a smaller route tomorrow. We have some friends in the program that climbed it today and depending on their report we may be climbing, resort skiing or ski touring! I start my Avalanche operations level 1 on wednesday and will be busy on what will be a tough course. In other news I passed my CSIA level 1 ski instructor course on friday so anyone that needs to learn skiing, im your man! Heres some photos from the day, they are all of sean unfortunately but enjoy!

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!