Taylor Lake

I had been to Taylor Lake before, during my first or second season telemarking. Similar to when you don't really know where you are going when someone else is driving, I didn't really know where I was going at the time because I was following someone else. And, truth be told, the trail up to Taylor Lake is mostly through dense forest and everything just starts to look the same. This was made worse by the fact that the sky was cloudy and snow was falling pretty much the entire time.

On the plus side, we knew that the ski down would be an exciting, narrow, twisty trail through the trees, and snow conditions were absolutely fantastic (boot-top medium density powder). Well worth the skin up!

Well, I should clarify that last comment. I decided to do a bit of experimenting on this day, using wax on my telemark skis instead of skins. Snow temperature at the parking lot was about -10C, so I put on two layers of green and started up. Initially, things went really smoothly and both step-resistance and glide was much better than with skins. However, after about an hour, grip was starting to fade and I had to side-step some of the small steep sections. Another two hours after that, almost up to the elevation of the lake, I gave up and put on my skins.

By the time we had gained our elevation, we ran into a group of two that we had seen a few times on the trail already. They mentioned that the trail we were currently on went up to Panorama Ridge, which looked like it had some good skiing on a lightly gladed slope. The trail to Taylor Lake was unbroken, and there was easily half a metre of powder to cut through. Ray and I were both pretty tired and did not relish all the trailbreaking that would be required to see the lake. The ridge looked enticing, but given snow conditions we decided to skip and ski back down.

After a quick frozen lunch (it was around -15C by this point), we put away our skins and skied back down the narrow trail. This is when I discovered that my grip wax hadn't completely rubbed off yet, and my glide was significantly affected. In the future, I will have to pick my spots for when to use wax instead of skins.

Break time before skiing down

When I got home, I learned that a skier had become trapped in a size 2 avalanche off the slopes of Mount Sparrowhawk, pinned against a tree and buried up to his armpits. Fortunately, he was able to get his cell phone and call for a rescue. Conditions are still a bit sketchy out there right now so be safe!