Dre Enjoying backcountry hike at start of blackcomb's season.

The following story is true, but the names were changed to protect the innocent.

Yep, it had to happen sooner or later. After easily one of the best season's in memory, Blackcomb Mountain closed it's doors for the season yesterday, April 23, 2006. Hard to see it end, with so much snow still up there to be shredded. But we weren't going to let it off easy. So the 'Silly Web Magazine from Whistler that rhymes with hogpotion' and a not-so-random pack of 60 some odd Whistler locals set out to close the season in style - on Blackcomb Peak of all places.

Did somebody say heatwave? Apparently we weren't listening, as we packed up and headed south to ski Mt Shuksan, Washington. That wasn't the only detail we missed.

First off, I rolled up to Bellingham in a pimpin' Cadillac sedan, only to learn that Andre had given his car to someone else, and was planning on heading up the mountain in my car. Hmmmm, the cadillac it was.

Let's pretend we were up at 1 o'clock in the morning to get an early mountaineering start on our climb up the North-West Couloir of Wedge Mountain.  In reality, we were only awake at 1 am because we had just arrived at Wedgemount Lake and set up camp after a late 9pm start and some long headlamp-hiking in the dark. It wasn't ideal, but we'd all done the 3-4 hour hike up the Wedgemount Lake trail before, so climbing 1200m up this steep and rooted trail in the dark seemed like a splendid idea at the time.  Tired and sweating in the dark at 1 am, we threw our bags down on the first somewhat-flat rock we found, and called it 'camp' for the night. 

To anyone who thought winter was over, it's time for a wake up call. We just got back from four days in the Whistler backcountry on the classic Spearhead Traverse, and even with temperatures hotter than Britney Spears we still had mountains of deep, dry powder all to ourselves.