Sunday, August 18, 2013

Powder Skiing and the Waiting Game

Skiing 40 cm of fresh powder is almost as fun as a ten year old with free reign of Disneyworld. Actually, I have no idea if that's fun at all, but I DO know that skiing 40 cm of fresh powder is quite an elating experience! The literal ice sheet that we skied on earlier this week is only a distant memory! We are all getting better at skiing! Some of the guys doubling their experience with the two days we've been, and others of us able to shred the entire mountain searching for as many fresh new runs as possible! I've never really skied trees before, or at least with much success, and now I can't stay out of them! Tree skiing is super fun for many reasons, but, as you can imagine, also tends to have more dangers than skiing wide open runs!


I've been looking forward to our first backcountry skiing trip for a while! In fact, I actually took a shower for the first time since getting down to Chile in anticipation of this trip! We were supposed to leave this morning, but, as luck would have it, because of the volatility of Patagonian weather we've had warm temps and its been dumping rain at the elevation we were intending to go. Therefore we are sitting here at basecamp twiddling our thumbs watching ski videos trying to keep our stoke up for the impending wet few days we are expecting to have while drilling our avalanche rescue skills in the rain!


Speaking of sitting around doing whatever you can to fill the time waiting out nasty weather, GS7 (guide school 7) was supposed to leave to do their advanced mountaineering course on the ice cap a week ago! Due to forecasted 3 meters of snow accompanied by up to 140km/hr winds for days on end, they have been stuck here at basecamp going out of their minds! And so it goes as the life of a mountaineer in the illustrious Patagonian mountains! Even the lift at the local ski resort shuts down through out the day for an hour or so due to high winds and zero visibility! Needless to say, there is a very distinct reason this region is said to have some of the worst weather on the planet! What better a place than here to cut our teeth training to be mountain guides! Understanding what it means to suffer coupled with being able to make sound decisions for the sake of the safety of the group are paramount for being a guide of any sort in the mountains! Its sounds weird to say I’m looking forward to our suffer fest here in Patagonia, but strangely, I am. I have been looking forward to this for as long as I can remember! I heard a quote by a prominent mountaineer that has stuck with me for a long time, “Alpinism is the art of suffering” and yet here I still am seeking after this as a lifelong goal! And as some of you might have heard me say before...”we didn't get dressed up for nothing!”