Valhalla Catskiing. Jan 11 & 12.

team Rossi @ Valhalla Powdercats from rossignol on Vimeo.

On Sunday morning our crew left the Best Western in Nelson and drove to Grand Junction to the Valhalla/Snowwater main office. From there we loaded an old school bus that had been painted blue and we drove for about 45 minutes before re-loading into the cat and heading up the Valhalla catskiing tenur.

Once we reached the summit of Huckleberry Bowl I knew we were going to be having an awesome couple of days. The terrain was the steepest I’d seen at a catskiing operation and there were features to play on everywhere. We ski’d a hot lap right off the bat and then headed back up to do it again. Throughout the day we shot on some pillow lines, jumps we had stepped out and even snapped some good ol fashioned pow slashes.

On Monday things began to heat up. Our crew split into two groups. Lindsay Dyer, Hopkins and I did some stills with Blake Jorgensen and Ian, Sage and Kye filmed with Crosland. Unfortunately Hopkins uncovered a stick while doing a turn and took it right in the butt. He went pale with shock and Paddy and Newell decided it would be best to make their way out with Mike so he could be checked at the clinic. By the time they made it back to the vehicles Mike felt well enough to drive home. I was glad to hear he had no major injuries and would be meeting us in Revelstoke later today.

The rest of us made the best of our last day at Valhalla. Kye did a couple memorable lines including a steep shelf to drop, a massive cliff and a good sized double. Ian chucked his meat off the biggest cliff he could find and stomped. Sage had an awesome straight line from the top and I scoped my own line from the bowl over. It was refreshing to get some variety in our lines since we’d been skiing trees and booters almost exclusively in the last week or so.