First Overnight Trip with the Girls

Here are a handful of pictures from our two week canoe trip. We paddled around 130 miles in three boats. It was a lot of work but well worth it. God really took care of us and provided everything we needed, right when it was needed. Especially the weather. It was cooler most of the trip- we had a few nights in the 30's, but we only had two short rain storms pass through.

There were lots of 'firsts' for the girls which led to a lot of learning and growth in our group.

The pictures uploaded in reverse order, and some out of order, so these first ones are close to the coast where we were picked up.

We began in North Carolina where the river was narrow and shallow. And ended in Georgetown, SC where we had to plan to paddle with the tide and pay attention to boat wakes so they would not roll our canoes.

We stayed on some private property for two nights and the owner brought us some shrimp to cook up!

This is when we hit marsh lands and old rice fields and could not find any dry, solid land to camp on. It was just about sunset when we found a boat ramp and small park with no camping signs- but it was our only option for the night.

Base Camp

Here are a few pictures of my apartment so y'all can see where I've been bunking over the last little bit.

Here's the steps to our door. With the nice wreathe I made for it!

The hallway from our entry way.

The view from our table. With the far closet turned into our gear room.


The gear room.

The bedroom I share with Alison and Ashley.

Elsie, my good friend who lives on campus, on the right, came over for pizza after church and brought two of her friends.

Right after we all moved in last fall we put together the puzzle thats hanging on the wall and then Alison got it framed. So here are the girls following the lessons of the picture.

That's all!

Back to the Books

By books I mean; a pack, skies, sunglasses and trail mix!

I'm back out at school now for my final three trips. Finally I will graduate in April. It's been tough - trying to cram four years of college into seven. But the end is finally in sight and there are no more exams, papers or long boring classes.

Just two and a half weeks spent out in the mountains sleeping in a tent!

These pictures are from my first trip which was a week of backcountry skiing based out of Revelstoke, BC. A great little ski town about 6 hours northeast of school in the Columbia Mountains. (Similar to the Canadian Rockies but they get more snow.)

We took day trips out, skinned up to usually about 6 - 7,000 feet and then skied back down!

Our first three days out were gorgeous. Warm and sunny but the conditions were not fabulous but still skiable. Usually the warm sun would melt a bit of the top layer of snow and then later in the afternoon when the sun would go behind the ridge it would freeze back up leaving a thin layer of crust, making it kind of tricky to turn.

We were guided during our trip by professional alpine touring guides. We had a lot of review of avalanche conditions and forecasting and how to travel in avalanche terrain. We all learned a ton and got lots of real experience with everything and it was fun to work with professional guides and see how they work and treat their clients/students.

This picture above is the snow surface, which has a thick layer of surface hoar that has formed on it. This is one of the biggest causes of avalanches. It is basically the same thing as dew forming on the snows surface. But then when it snows again on top of it, because the crystals are not formed together well, it becomes a weak layer underneath a new layer of snow. Then when something either natural, ie. wind, more snow, sun warming, or artificial: humans, snowmobiles, bombs, helicopters etc., add weight to the top layer, the weak layer cannot support it and so it slides: creating an avalanche. I think this stuff is cool!

We dug several snow pits during the week to look at the different layers in the snow and test how much pressure and weight it would take to disturb the weak layers and cause an avalanche.

Not a bad view for this test spot!

Goodness!

To find some powder tree runs we were supposed to drive about 16k up a logging road that hadn't been plowed in a month. We made it about 14k and then got stuck. It took us an hour to get both trucks dug out and turned around and out of the road.

Our guides were driving a Subaru Impreza and waited for us at the top. Yeah Subaru!

This is the "avalanche" that I set off with my skies as I came out of the woods. It's more just a small slab that let loose. It's probably about as wide as two pick-ups and about 60-65 degrees. And it just ran 15-18 feet until it hit the bench that I'm standing on to take this picture. So nothing epic or crazy but it was still cool to ski up and see the snow break away in a perfect crack and slide down in front of me. The debris, or pile of snow at the bottom that has slid turns into cement. Which is why it is very hard to dig yourself out if you are only partially buried.

This is where the skiing got incredible! This was super light, fluffy mountain powder and we were all able to get some first tracks in even with our group of 12. It was so great! I would we don't get snow like this back east, but I guess we do, just when I'm not there.

So this was my first course for the semester. One out of three. I passed!

Not a bad way to go, eh!

Good Boots, A Warm Sleeping Bag and Gormet Trail Mix

A few days after we got back from our rock climbing course, we repacked and headed farther north to the backcountry of Whistler for an eight day mountaineering course. We had to pack food for eight days, along with crampons, ice axes, harnesses and helmets. Our packs weighed close to 50 pounds as we trekked across the mountains.

This was our first day out on a glacier. It was really sweet to be out on the glacier and the crampons let you walk pretty much anywhere, but I think I'm still more a fan of snow instead of ice.

The glaceirs are huge! It made us feel so small as we crossed them. Especially after we reached a ridge or summit and we could look back across at it. Some parts that we had to climb were crazy steep also.

We stopped to do a bit of climbing before the sun hit the ice. It was pretty fun to climb up the ice. A lot like rock climbing except there are holds everywhere because I could just make them with my axe or crampons.

We had the best weather for our entire trip. It was clear blue skies like this for 8 days. We all have wicked sunglass tans now!

There are lots of areas on the glaciers that are like this, full of crevasses and we just had to zig zag back and forth to find a way across. Right here we were tring to get back onto a ridge that was probably 1/4 mile away but we walked almost a mile by the time we found a way through.

At some points we had to climb down into the crevasses and back up the other side.

This is the bottom of the glacier that we crossed. You can kind of see the lake, in the middle left of this picture, its where our tents were set up for camp for 3 nights before we started our traverse.

This is the rest of the Alpine track that I'm in.

Heading up the top portion of the glacier. We had to be roped in because of the crevasses we just crossed and it got really steep ahead of us, where you can kind of see the other group.

Some gourmet backcountry cooking!

And again, just cause it looked so good.

And I can't figure out how to get rid of this second picture.

We just summited this mountain earlier that day. We climbed along the bottom edge of that snow slab to get up to the ridge. It wasn't quite as steep as this picture makes it look, but it was definetly steep! I got a bit nervous going up, but mostly because I was thinking of how we would get back down. Below the snow is all scree slope so we pretty much just skied back down in our boots. It wasn't too bad and it was really sweet to be up at the summit. Its just over 8,000 feet.

This was a sunrise from our camp.

On our traverse, there were so many slopes that we had to cross like this. They were super steep and all loose boulders. It was pretty rough going, especially with a huge heavy back. Our knees and ankles were getting pretty beat up by the end of the trip. Ibuprofen and Tylenol were part of our breakfasts for the last few mornings.

This was from camp our last night. We were up on a ridge at 7,000 feet. Completely exposed. It felt like we slept through a hurricane because the wind was so strong all night. It was our coldest night out and we woke up to frost on our packs tents.

This is my group, with our two guides on our way out. We all smelled pretty bad after 8 days. And I am totally fine if I never have to eat oat meal again!