VOC trips are organized by members like yourself, not professional guides. The trips go into wilderness areas where assistance is unavailable and unexpected events can occur. You could be seriously injured or die. You are responsible for your own actions. Please use caution.
Mother of Ski Mountaineering (Intermediate Trip Series) · Fri. Feb. 14th, 2025 - Mon. Apr. 28th, 2025
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Start: Friday, Feb. 14th
End: Monday, Apr. 28th
Description:
Are you an intermediate backcountry skier interested in moving onto bigger days on bigger peaks? Just do G1 and want to see how that applies on skis? Do lines like the Aussie Couloir call your name? Do you want to ski on Kulshan (Baker)? Then this is the opportunity for you! As you may have deduced, ski mountaineering is the cross section of skiing and mountaineering, that means ski objectives that require rope work, be that for glacier travel or rappelling into a steep line. Throughout this series of trips we will build up the skills and experience to approach steep lines and glaciated peaks, we will focus on the hard (rope work and steep skiing techniques) and soft (knowledge base and decision making) skills that will set you up for success (getting home safely) when approaching bigger objectives. The goal is to create a community where we can make good decisions with good people to have good days in the mountains.
The precise scheduling of this trip will depend on the availability of those selected and a curriculum will be dependent on our collective knowledge base, however a vague outline is as follows:
Late February/Early March:
An evening to chat about the goals of this trip, looking at decision making tools (mapping, avy forecasts, weather), and how we implement these tools. Ideally this would be in the clubroom or over zoom.
An evening to practice rope skills. Focusing on tying in when on skis, crevasse rescue (haul systems), rappelling, and general rope management. (This could be in the same night as above)
March:
A day or two out touring applying these rope skills and practicing making informed terrain choices. Practice building snow anchors and steep skiing techniques. This may look like a large group trip to a hut or splitting off into groups to practice these skills.
April:
A final objective that aligns with the goals you spelt out going into this trip series, a time to work as a team to apply the skills we have learned to achieve a goal. This may be a day trip or multi-day push.
Requirements:
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Can ski black diamonds confidently and comfortably
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Commitment to this trip as a series (Multiple Trips)
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Have AST-1 or Equivalent
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Been ski touring for at least a season
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Backcountry overnight experience (not necessarily in the winter)
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G1 is an asset but not required (if you don’t have G1, Rock 2 or equivalent is also very helpful)
If you are super duper stoked and are missing any of these, please reach out and we can talk about it!
A note on commitment and selection: ski mountaineering is a heavily weather/condition dependent activity, and as such the final objective will not be scheduled far in advance, this means to make good upon this much desired and relatively exclusive offering by the club and instructors, you should do your best to be able to make it to as many dates as possible. Large objectives will be scheduled roughly a week before the date, other dates will be scheduled as soon as we determine who is going. If you wish to do the objective you are expected to show up and engage with the instructional days.
Since this trip is such a large time commitment for everyone involved, the signup process for this series of trips will work differently than other VOC trips. Please sign up on this post and fill out the google form on the signup page. After the committed list closes, I will go through the responses and make selections based on experience and stoke, I’ll let you know by mid February.
Posted: 2025-02-01 03:39:55
Last modified: 2025-02-01 12:16:38