The week that was…. Where to begin… this week has been hectic, busy, crazy, stressful, full, fun, exciting, productive, useful and full of learning. We chose to meet up, all three of use before heading into the unknown to practise essential skills, bond as a team and finalise plans in person. Vancouver suited as it’s more or less Gabby’s home town and she was in town skiing and spending time with friends and family after completing her OPs one course. Nicole is planning on spending the rest of her winter somewhere in the mountains of BC and I’m relatively close in Aspen, Colorado Promptly upon arriving we exploded in Gabby’s parent’s apartment. Think gear, clothes, computers and all their attachments everywhere. Our first day we spent doing general research on weather, accomodation and other logistics. We skyped AJ (our in-country liaison) and , and figuring out how to use a few new items of technology. The skiing portion of this expedition is the easy part, attempting to film it and learn how to use some new bits of is definitely a challenge. Our heads all hurt after trying to make our first instagram story (epic fail) and the gimble just wouldn’t stay still. We reviewed our route options that we set way back in July and spent time looking at them day by day both on Google Earth and on topographic maps. We’ve tried extremely hard and the best/only maps of the At Bashy mountain range we can find are old Soviet military maps from the 1970’s. Contour lines are 1:100m so part of our route-finding will involve looking out for 99m cliffs. We’ve acknowledged that our number one route is probably very optimistic as it is most likely going to require a very technical ascent and descent from the glaciers. It is also going to require a very long weather window. We’re still keeping route options B and C in mind. Our hard work with all of our grant applications paid off and at the last minute The North Face came to the party to help us out. For the second year in a row we were runner’s up for TNF adventure grant but they were so stoked with our project that they decided to sponsor us with some gear! While waiting for our new ski and camping gear to arrive we took a day trip out to the Manning park area. We tried really hard not to follow the obvious skin track and navigate up a peak with just a poor map and our compasses. A recent rain event meant we also got to practise some really bad skiing that day and dig an interesting pit to study the snow’s stability. Our gear arrived on Monday and it was like Christmas as kids as we ripped open the boxes to find our new tent, sleeping bags and outerwear. We got to business setting up the tent in the lounge, lofting our sleeping bags and watching ski movies for inspiration in the tent after dinner. Slumber parties never get old. The last three days we spent out in the field testing all our new gear and technology. In line with the theme of the week we were running late and arrived at the Garibaldi provincial park car park at dusk. While this could have been viewed as frustrating, we mostly viewed it as great training. Nothing like skinning for 5 hours, in the dark, with 25kg packs on. We set up our tent promptly, cooked a delicious Backpackers Pantry meal and and went straight to bed, snug as bugs in our inferno sleeping bags. The next day we set out to do some skiing! After all, that’s what we love to do most. There had been quite a lot of snow lately, and up at higher altitudes it was skiing very well. We did some more pit digging and based on the results decided on a fun, lower angle ski to keep things safe. The snow was awesome but skiing powder with an outrageously heavy pack was quite tough. The technology was still giving us some headaches as we battled with the GPS most of the day and didn’t quite make it to our designated campsite. We decided we needed to set up camp by 3pm in order to get some rope work practise in and take some good quality photos and video before dark. Our goals were optimistic though as out tent setting up ability appeared to deteriorate with good visibility and after taking bets on how long it would take we all lost after about 40 minutes It’s not an adventure until something goes wrong right? Our stove seemed not to be working on our second night and after and hour of shaking, poking and nearly setting the tent on fire we gave up and surrendered to protein bars and some lukewarm, half cooked (but still delicious) chili. We’ve hopefully resolved this issue now and we’re looking forward to some warm meals in Kyrgyzstan!
Our last day we spent doing some more filming practice, more skiing on very bad snow and more navigating/GPS use. Overall it was an amazing week and we really did accomplish what we set out to do. We’re aware of our weaknesses as a team, what gear we still need to acquire, how cold we will be and how heavy our packs will be. Bring on Kyrgyzstan!
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AuthorMarian Krogh Archives
August 2019
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