Got out with a large crew to tackle Vantage Peak. Despite periods of cloud and wind we decided to head up to the peak and see how things looked for a descent of Vantage’s northeast face.

Click here for Jonathan’s pictures.
Click here for Jonathan’s video of the slide.
Click here for Rob’s pictures.

Jonathan and Rob heading off for an adventure.

The crew: Rob, Rich, Senja, Jonathan, Ziff and Matt.

Ziff and Jonathan bootpacking up the the ridge.
The wind was blowing quite hard from the south as we ascended.

Senja, Rich and Rob.

Jonathan – more bootpacking!

Ziff clambers up the ridge towards a high entrance to the face.

Rob nears the high entrance.

Rob and ziff saw through a cornice.
Due to some strong wind from the SW during the day
there were some apprehensions about loading and stability.
We found a good cornice to cut as a stability test (click for video) MVI_0128.

The avalanche caused by our cornice drop minutes after it happened.
Image by John Baldwin.

Since the face had been cleaned we decided it would be reasonable to ski the slope.
The bed surface was a little firm…

Ziff heads down the face.

Rob skiing the face. Contrast has been adjusted to make the crown more visible.

Rob, Ziff, Jonathan and Matt at the bottom.
Rich and Senja took an alternate route down into Cerise Creek
Some of the crew headed off to Shady Acres while I went
to Whistler to moderate a focus group on avalanche decision making!

The bottom of the slide we cut loose.