justin lamoureux: classic lines, good times and lost tourists in the backcountry

After an utterly epic start to the season we got hit with a little rain on wednesday in the mountains. not expecting much on thursday we went up to check out blackcomb mtn's opening day. Surprise! the clouds parted and the alpine was awesome. We spent the day lapping Spanky's ladder. For today, knowing that the snow was quite good in the alpine, Dave Basterechea, eric soucy and myself grabbed our avi gear and went out for a casual day of hiking a few of blackcomb's classic backcountry lines. Eric had only enough time for a quick (relatively) lap so we started off we D.O.A. It's fun tight chute that runs off the side of blackcomb peak. It tends to get a little wind hammered and with a handful of people having done it yesterday it was a little more chewed than we had hoped for but fun nonetheless and held some good turns. And as a usual occurance from the wind, a rocky exit.
Having left eric dave and i went on to do usueme. as we grabbed a bite to eat on top of the chute, we heard a voice cry up "Please wait for me! I'm all alone and pretty scared!" what? "yeah sure. we'll wait for you" As it turns out, he was a tourist from the states who had met some people, who were going to take him to another line in the area.
Somehow this fellow ended up getting seperated, on his own, lost, with no avalanche gear, at sunset in the backcountry. As we were the closest people to him, he followed our line. So Dave and i waited for him to make his way to the top. Then with the sun setting in behind the mtns, we enjoyed our pow turns down to the valley below.
another awesome day in whistler.

Dave B. dropping into the top of D.O.A.