Riding the Whale

It was Tuesday August 28^th and Bariloche had seen little snow and its fair share of sun for almost a week straight (it would snow later that week).  This had removed snow from the lowest areas and ruined it up to medium elevations, but above that cooler temps had kept the snow fresh and stable.  This meant that groups were starting push further out from the “Resort’ of Cerro Catedral and take-on bigger lines.

Today my group, which consisted of snowboarder Merk, University of British Columbia student Pete “Whimsey”, ex-army special forces intelligence officer Kyle, lightning strike survivor ‘Sparky, myself and coaches Chris Coulter and Tony Pavlantos, would ski a line dubbed by SGT as ‘The Whale’.

Merk Somalia pointing towards the ‘Whale’ off the backside of Cerro Catedral near the town of San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina.  The ‘Whale’ is long and wide couloir on the far lookers-right side of the photo.

 The Whale is a lengthy but wide couloir that runs from Spires at the top of Cerro Catedral down the backside of the mountain into the valley containing part of the trail to the Frey Hut.  The Whale is accessed by a quick 30 min hike to the top off the Laguna Bowl, a side-country area that is the closest SGT playground and also this year’s grounds for a Red-Bull big mountain-freestyle competition on August 22.

The Sidecountry playground of Lagunga

From the base of the spires at the top of Laguna you have to drop over onto the steep and rocky backside of Cerro Catedral where you are completely on your own for assistance (not that the resort’s patrol is capable of an in-bounds rescue).  This required just a bit of down-climbing, but the views of the valley and all the way over to the Frey Hut were phenomenal.

Chris, Tony, and myself standing about to strap in and descend into the whale, just taking in the views.  Photo courtesy of Merk

As soon as we could we locked into our bindings, feeling more secure with planks on our feet, and one by one executed a fair bit of technical rock hopping in order to access the couloir proper.  I don’t know of anyone with pictures of this, but I would say it was decently exposed.  It was not too bad for us skiers, but some of the boarders definitely needed to take their time.

Once we were at an entrance to the couloir we regrouped.  Coultor dropped in first.  The couloir was so big that it completely screwed with your perception of its length and width.  Eventually Chris re-emerged in the distance on the valley floor, probably about 2500 feet below us.  We then dropped in one by one. The snow was old but fine and dry up top but morphed to icy crust by the bottom.  The couloir was wide enough for everyone to get some fresh tracks.  It was also wide enough that one was able to make GS turns down it, which made for a very fun run.   When I reached the group I heard Tyson from the SGT staff radio over from across the valley that he had some cool pictures of the run.  I don’t know if I’ll ever get to check them out, but maybe I’ll see them in some SGT marketing materials somewhere.

We ate our sandwiches from Tage quickly at the valley floor.  Then all that was left for us to do was to strap on our skins and begin the +2500 ft climb up the opposite side of the valley.  It was my first time using all-nylon skins and I thought they stuck my crazy-banana skis onto slopes much steeper than I would usually head directly up.  Before we knew it we were back at the top of the ridge.

We skinned up the from the valley floor to the saddle near the center-right of the photo.  From there it was an hour traverse back to the reverse.

On our skin we passed below slopes like these.  We would return the next day.

We debated hiking up a bit further and getting another lap down to the valley floor.  I was game for this, but with the weather starting to turn for the worse the group decided to begin the hour-long traverse along the far side of the ridge back to Cerro Catedral.  The traverse was too difficult, but the next one of the female riders almost had a slide for life into what was aptly dubbed ‘Mordor’ but fortunately 30 feet into her slide she stopped on a rock with only some bruises.

We all safely made it back to the resort and all in time for the 4 15 tea and pasties at our lodge.  A fine day that we would double up on the day after, after all, it would snow 10 cm that night.

526984_4583853875270_963596542_n, a photo by GrifCW on Flickr.  The next a 10 min would leads us to fresh snow and a rarely ridden zone. The chute gets narrower until its less than ski-length, then makes a dog-leg right and opens open into the couloir until you get to the spine which you can ride full steam all the way out onto the apron. yeah… it was that sweet