Andrew Strain Photography

I did some shooting up at Cypress Mountain late last season, and was pleasantly surprised to sneak in a pow day shortly before the lifts came to a halt for the year. Another surprise was the quality of the tree shredding in the Cypress sidecountry - reminded me of my favorite zones off Whistler's peak.

Eliel Hindert (now complete with poles!) gets a taste of Cypress spring pow:


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Sunday has lived up to its name the past couple weeks, giving me plenty of opportunity to shoot photos and work on my increasingly well-defined goggle tan. Two weeks ago, (after the storm-of-the-season week came to a close), I spent the day out in Lakeside Bowl on Blackcomb with the NuuLife crew with the intent of staying out all day and shooting some pow shots at sunset...

John Swystun getting it done on both sides of the lens:




Read the full post for a story about how easy sledding is and a short whis park video from Eric Poulin:
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...Unfortunately, Dave Craig suffered an equipment malfunction on the landing of a step down and had his board double eject (wtf, I know) and take off ghost rider style down to the bottom of the bowl. With his board a 500 feet below us, we decided to bugger the sunset shooting and call it a day.

This...


...turned into this:

Is this why we're supposed to wear leashes?

Fast forward a week to last Sunday - the weather was prime again so I took up an offer to head out on a sled trip into the Whistler area backcountry. I've always heard people say how much of a bitch sledding can be when you first start out, but I was not prepared for the beat-down my body was about to receive.

Making matters worse was the fact that I wasn't actually sledding up to the zone - I was being towed, wakeboard style, into the alpine. I like to think my legs are in pretty good shape, but my arms? Please. I'm a photographer, not a longshoreman. Now I feel like Stretch Armstrong - and don't even get me started on the roller coaster ride up to Tricouni...

Complaints aside, once we were up it was about as glorious as it gets. We had some rad laps in the trees to start out, then hit some mellow terrain in the alpine and built up a perfect huck-anything step over.

Eliel Hindert found a nice spine area in the trees to rip:


My prior sledding experience is almost exclusively ice fishing trips. Not today.


Andrew Narkewicz, double or nothing:


Gideon Baldridge plays backcountry chauffeur for Eliel:


When we arrived at the trailhead in the morning it was an absolute zoo, so Gideon got a little creative with his parking skills. It cost us when we got down; the snow he parked on had melted under the heat of the car and refrozen after the sun set, pretty much welding his Land Rover in place. It took a bunch of digging and a pull from Hockenstein (thanks buddy) before we were on our way back to the city... we rolled home 15 hours after we left in the morning, dead tired and super-stoked.

Meanwhile, back at Whistler, Eric Poulin did some filming and threw together a little edit of how he spent his sunny Sunday - check it out!


Last Sunday from Eric Poulin on Vimeo.


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Wednesday was essentially a write off day due to the shenanigans that went down on Tuesday night, but we managed to get in a couple good laps in the afternoon. I was stoked to be riding sans camera - ripping through the trees and pillows is always a little nerve wracking when the contents of your backpack are worth more than your car...

On Thursday we got up bright and early (leaving from Vancouver early) and cashed in some previously purchased fresh tracks tickets to get up the mountain an hour or so before the general public. Fresh tracks is great, especially if you're really hungry - someone with a big stomach can easily get their money's worth at the breakfast buffet in the Roundhouse...

As is the norm during any decent Whistler storm, the visibility off the back of the peak was atrocious - the only remedy is to head into the trees.

Jake Cohn makes some low-vis pow turns:


More words and photos in the full post:

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Eliel Hindert drops 20:


Pow stoke:


Theoretically, this was going to be a fun photo of Eliel, Taylor and Jake all charging through the snow at the same time. You can see Eliel's ski, upside down, in the top right. Fail.


What's that you say, Eliel? It's deep?


Jake and Taylor try to coordinate their next move a little better:


Eric Poulin harvests some stump-pillow:


I got off the mountain at 5:45, soaking wet (I'm a sweaty beast) and dead tired. Back down to the city to dump photos, take a breather and see the lady before heading back up for the weekend...

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