Andrew Strain Photography » backcountry

Spring Touring – Cerise Creek

Strain — Fri, 07 May 2010 06:36:00 +0000

I went on a touring mission up Cerise Creek / Mt Joffre with a couple friends last week. Conditions were… interesting over the first half of the approach, where for the first time since I bought them I wasn’t cursing the uselessness of my snowshoes. The crampons bit into the choppy ice of the forest floor far more effectively than climbing skins, but I’m still buying a splitboard this fall. Snowshoes suck.

We thought the snow might be a little sloppy up high, but avoiding sun-baked aspects led to a late April powder harvest. Gotta love that spring crop!

Sun Days

Strain — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:47:00 +0000

Sunday has lived up to its name the past couple weeks, giving me plenty of opportunity to shoot photos and work on my increasingly well-defined goggle tan. Two weeks ago, (after the storm-of-the-season week came to a close), I spent the day out in Lakeside Bowl on Blackcomb with the NuuLife crew with the intent of staying out all day and shooting some pow shots at sunset…

John Swystun getting it done on both sides of the lens:

Read the full post for a story about how easy sledding is and a short whis park video from Eric Poulin:
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…Unfortunately, Dave Craig suffered an equipment malfunction on the landing of a step down and had his board double eject (wtf, I know) and take off ghost rider style down to the bottom of the bowl. With his board a 500 feet below us, we decided to bugger the sunset shooting and call it a day.

This…

…turned into this:

Is this why we’re supposed to wear leashes?

Fast forward a week to last Sunday – the weather was prime again so I took up an offer to head out on a sled trip into the Whistler area backcountry. I’ve always heard people say how much of a bitch sledding can be when you first start out, but I was not prepared for the beat-down my body was about to receive.

Making matters worse was the fact that I wasn’t actually sledding up to the zone – I was being towed, wakeboard style, into the alpine. I like to think my legs are in pretty good shape, but my arms? Please. I’m a photographer, not a longshoreman. Now I feel like Stretch Armstrong – and don’t even get me started on the roller coaster ride up to Tricouni…

Complaints aside, once we were up it was about as glorious as it gets. We had some rad laps in the trees to start out, then hit some mellow terrain in the alpine and built up a perfect huck-anything step over.

Eliel Hindert found a nice spine area in the trees to rip:

My prior sledding experience is almost exclusively ice fishing trips. Not today.

Andrew Narkewicz, double or nothing:

Gideon Baldridge plays backcountry chauffeur for Eliel:

When we arrived at the trailhead in the morning it was an absolute zoo, so Gideon got a little creative with his parking skills. It cost us when we got down; the snow he parked on had melted under the heat of the car and refrozen after the sun set, pretty much welding his Land Rover in place. It took a bunch of digging and a pull from Hockenstein (thanks buddy) before we were on our way back to the city… we rolled home 15 hours after we left in the morning, dead tired and super-stoked.

Meanwhile, back at Whistler, Eric Poulin did some filming and threw together a little edit of how he spent his sunny Sunday – check it out!

Last Sunday from Eric Poulin on Vimeo.

Season Opener

Strain — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:23:00 +0000

Whistler doesn’t open until Thursday (edit: Whistler is now opening on WEDNESDAY, Blackcomb will follow the day after), but with a decent storm rolling through late last week, there was finally enough snow in the mountains to kick off my 2008/09 snowboard season. On Sunday, we loaded up the car and made our way up to the Diamond Head area of Garabaldi park for a relatively mellow backcountry adventure. Stoked!

Not too shabby for the first turn of the season…

The sunset view down Howe Sound was a great bonus after an awesome day of shredding:

More photos and words after the jump:

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Up, up, up…

Are we there yet?

The only bad thing about our day was the fact that Poulin and I don’t have snowshoes… yet. Still, finally snowboarding again was well worth the extra effort. Dear loving parents, Christmas is in a month

Group shot!

Check out the rest of the day here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewstrain/sets/72157610014159230/

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