In a season where instability has plagued snowpacks throughout the Rockies, news of avalanches and a beleaguered resort industry have graced the New York Times, and British Columbia has already reported 11 deaths – it is hard not to reminisce on the bottomless powder of yesteryear.

Condition reports around the new year left me contemplating an early trip to the desert until a last-minute cancellation landed me a spot on a chalet trip in BC. Apprehension of slides and glacier skiing quickly relented amidst stable 250 cm pits and cold smoke. Socked in amidst the trees, powder and pillow-lines kept us busy until high pressure invited us to the peaks for the last two days of our week.

While it is easy to write off the snowpack and grab the rock shoes or a good book, there is still plenty of good touring to be had in pockets throughout the Rocky Mountain West … it just helps if one has a curiosity to explore, and the knowledge of when to wait. This winter is turning into the ideal winter to polish technique on the more stable slopes, and maybe even a good excuse to take that next
level avy course.

For others, it’s simply time to migrate south or book tickets to Alaska.

Photographer Dan Long is making the most of a mandatory (and seemingly indefinite) vacation and has chosen skis over rock shoes – for this week.

During the next year we hope to use our field measurements to, among other things, help explain how cirques over deepen and create a mathematical model of cirque glacier dynamics that can be used to predict their future behavior. It is worth mentioning that NSF grants do not cover personal clothing, leaving each researcher responsible for their own attire. As a graduate student with a limited salary, I send many thanks to Cloudveil!

II.
Although I have begrudgingly spent most the past three months at my computer trying to calculate the viscosity and balance of forces driving and resisting the motion of a small cirque glacier in the Vermillion Range of the Canadian Rockies, British Columbia, it isn’t always this way. Now lost amongst the many spreadsheets of data collected at our field site is the fact that each velocity measurement, temperature record, or ice depth represents time spent with friends in the mountains of Canada.

Without exception, each visit to the West Washmawapta Glacier starts with a helicopter.

There is not enough space in this post to cover all the ways that helicopters are almost as fantastic as glaciers and cirques- I rate them Number 3 on my list of The Best Things Ever. And, while I can’t comment on how our camp compares to other base camps around the world, but it is certainly comfortable.

For example, with the never-ending sun found in the Canadian Rockies, our solar panels provided enough electricity to charge batteries for each days’ research program as well as an occasional viewing of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., a Fox sci-fi cowboy television show that really did deserve a second season.

We also played a lot of Uno™ and drank a lot of whiskey.

Our project, a comprehensive study of the ice dynamics of a, shall we say, “petite” glacier and its affect on the surrounding cirque, is definitely comparable to the siege-style of mountaineering, had we actually been there to climb anything.

Over the course of three field seasons, a total of seven trips, we measured just about everything we could think to measure within the limits of our NSF funding (and then some) – surface velocity using GPS devices, rockfall frequency and magnitude, sliding in subglacial tunnels, water discharge from the snout, proglacial till thicknesses, ice and snow melt, but none more terrifying than environmental variables in the bergschrund.

Each year, I dreaded my annual visits to that yawning chasm – few places make one feel more mortal. The very existence of the bergschrund may prove to be one of the fundamental reasons cirque headwalls even exist, which led us to instrument three separate vertical profiles up to 25 meters deep. A preliminary glance at the data we collected from that ‘crack of death’ indicates the rocks of the headwall are likely in as much danger of disintegration as the scientists sent to measure them.

Hours of mental rumination regarding the formation of the West Washmawapta cirque, while staring in to its hug-requesting arêtes, led me to one unexpected conclusion: despite frequent judgments to the contrary (words like bleak or barren being common), the Alpine world is vivacious and perpetually changing. Our little cirque is tumultuous – a raucous combination of avalanche upon avalanche, glacial streams and waterfalls, and collapsing cornices. Silence is completely absent; we just became accustomed to the uninterrupted noise. I elicited great satisfaction from a perch high on the glacier looking out over the spine of the Rockies, with the knowledge that every cirque, up and down the range, was celebrating its existence as a cirque, an alpine jubilee of snow, ice, water, and rock, and I was certainly happy I was invited.

III.
Canadian Sunset – I listened to this all the time up there

Once I was alone
So lonely and then
You came out of nowhere
Like the sun up from the hill
Cold cold as the wind
Warm warm were your lips
Out there on the ski trail
Where your kiss filled me with thrill
Weekend in Canada a change of scenery
Was the most I bargained for
And then I discovered you and in your eyes
I’ve found a love that I couldn’t ignore

Down down came the sun
Fast fast beat my heart
I knew as the sun set from that day
We’d never part

Down down down down came the sun
Fast fast fast fast beat my heart
I knew as the sun set from that day
We’d never part

Down down down down came-a the sun
Fast fast fast fast beat-a my heart
I knew as the sun set from that day
We’d never part
We’d never part
We’d never part

Cloudveil pro Johnny Sanders is a PhD Candidate at University of California, Berkeley.