I was bummed to miss the eastside splitfest, but I have an excuse. A group of friends convened at the Qua Yurt for 5 days from 3/31-4/4/08. The trip was a reunion of sorts for Santa Barbara folks fueled by a strange but overwhelming compulsion for powder turns, canned beer, and rocks – and their partners who were/are forced to endure a life of relative poverty in the name of geology. What follows is a compilation of pictures from the group, on what ended up being a very, very fun trip.

Getting prepped and packed. Holy poutin! Beer is pricey in the great white north.

Guess how many eggs you can fit in a nalgene? Something like drinking beer from a frisbee…

Group quiver. Note that there are only three bunk beds in the yurt.

Home for the next 5 days. The Qua Yurt.

Home away from yurt. Check out the carving up top. Not a bad view either.

Pretty country in these parts.

It was snowing pretty hard when we toured over the pass to the yurt, and in our haste, we triggered a sizeable slide from ~1/5 of the way up the south face of S. Seeman peak. The soft slab broke ~100 cm down, and the fracture propagated ~1 km from where we heard the whumph, up the slope below the ridge. No one was caught, luckily, but we returned for dinner that night feeling a bit freaked out and with a renewed sense of caution and humility. Here’s a view of the slide, started from the lower left of the photo.

Closeup of the crown.

Needless to say, we chose lines carefully after that and skied mostly glades and relatively conservative shots while the snowpack continued to stabilize throughout the week. Some tracks.

DB enjoying his inaugural run as a splitter.

How’s that new 168 S-series treatin ya?

Bunnster testing the snow depth.

Skinning up Wildhorse Peak.

Some pretty bold lines in the bowl behind Wildhorse Peak from skiers with slightly more confidence in the snow stability.

Our lines on the other side of Wildhorse.

Another day, we skinned up the ridge to S. Seeman, visible in the photo left. N. Seeman is the rounded, higher peak in the photo center.

Nice views from the ridgline.

PB swimming on the way down.

We also had a few laps on this peak, seen here on the right from the yurt porch.

Skintrack up to said peak.

PB going low on the way down.

DB also having a good ride. Note the spirit fingers.

Yo con los arboles.

Me having fun on the Mojo 171. Punch it Margaret!

Back at the yurt, we discovered why the beer was so expensive here. It’s Biere Forte! That’s 5.9 % for the English-speaking crowd.

If you’re wondering why things taste sort of funny out of the oven there.

Some members of a rogue ninja faction up to no good in the yurt.

On the way out, we build a small kicker over a cat road. Cptn. Meatbeef sends it.

JO, also catching some careful air, Old Milwaukee in hand. Easily my favorite picture from the trip.

After we came out on Friday, we spent the weekend exploring Nelson and surrounds, watching amateur hockey, eating some really great grub (Outer Clove, Kootenay Bakery, Red Fish Grill), and checking out the local, er, café. cough. Needless to say, fun was had by all involved.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and thanks to all the folks on this site who continue to post ridiculously awesome trip reports here week after week. As a bonus, I caught some nice views of the eastside on the flight back. Spring is looking good here.