Decker - April 2, 2009

words and photos by Sharon Bader and Lee Lau unless otherwise noted.

Sharon, Ryan, Tyler and I went up to the Blackcomb backcountry today. After getting past the snowboarders bootpacking the skintrack near the East Col gongshow, we headed down the Circle Lake circuit to Decker. Stability seemed fine so we skinned straight up Decker Main and over to the col. Visibility was good enough for us to see that Trorey North had the remains of slide debris on it. So we bagged the idea of a Pattison-Trorey-Decker tour and decided to just hit Decker repeatedly.

5 hours later and we had skied Decker Main, 9th Hole and a line next to 19th Hole. The weather broke just enough for us to get visibility into all these runs. Unfortunately the cornices around 19th Hole were pretty large and the entries pretty sketchy as we ended up skiing a shorter line next to our intended route. The line culminated for Ryan and Tyler with a 10 foot drop to icy bed surface from a cornice-triggered avalanche.

We ended with a line off skiers left on Disease Ridge. It's really too bad that winter just hit two weeks ago in Whistler as the rising temps mean that spring skiing are just around the corner.