The Heart of Darkness is definitely the most unique thing I've ever "skied." Skied goes in quotations because there isn't a whole lot of skiing going on when you're trying to descend a 500-foot, 48-degree chute that's 300cm wide (at the wide spots) and has 80-foot vertical rock walls down both sides. I did, however, make two jump turns in the chute before it opened up to couloir size. Anyone who has ever seen my shitty skiing knows how amazing that is.
The crew today consisted of six skiers, which made me consider backing out. I try to avoid going into the backcountry with groups bigger than four, especially when it involves bottlenecks like the rappel entrance to the Heart of Darkness. Ben and Will were the only ones who had ever been to this thing before, and we thought about just making them team captains and picking sides like junior high kickball so we could split into two groups. But those two, myself, Jim, Jamon, and Alex are all pretty good at moving quick and not wasting too much time, so we decided to stick together and it worked out fine.
Big thanks to
Andrew McLean for
replacing the anchor at the entrance. It made rappelling in very straight forward and much less dangerous than it must have been when there was a bunch of mystery fixed gear and a mess of tat at the lip.
The crew for today's pre-work tour consisted of myself, Jamon, Pip, and Tanya. Jamon and I are what you'd call decent skiers. Which means we can pretty much ski what we want and usually don't crash. Pip and Tanya, on the other hand, and full on rippers. Which means that they ski the same lines as me and Jamon except going twice as fast and look completely in control the entire time. Basically, it was reverse sexism on the snow today.
