Delving into Dushanbe

It's hard to believe we've made it all they way here. After almost 30 hours of transit across the world and  not sleeping for two days (save a few upright airplane naps), Team Flow has touched down in Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe.
We are delighted to report that all the luggage made it through the several transfers to this little airport in Central Asia. Four ski bags, five duffle bags of expedition equipment and over 350 lbs of clothing donations
came off the carousel, a headache for security personnel checking the  baggage tags but we rolled out of the terminal triumphant, with everything accounted for.

Turkish Airlines waived over 350 lbs of checked baggage fees to get these clothing donations to Tajikistan

The team has to give a big shout-out to Turkish Airlines who agreed to let us check all 350 lbs of clothing donations  free of charge. Their willingness to back this project prompted support from their codeshare partnerss United Airlines and Air Canada, who both agreed to match the excess baggage waiver for their portion of the journey. After a lot of emails, phone calls and last minute hurdles, every piece of donated clothing from Whistler Blackcomb, MEC and friends in our communities has made it to Tajikistan. The clothes will be mostly distributed through the Gorno-Badakshan Province Jamoats, the village councils representing the towns we will be travelling through on our way to and from the Fedchenko.

View from the top floor of the Poytakht Hotel, Dushanbe

Our local fixer, Saidali Gaibuldaev of Pamir Guides, greeted us at the airport at 5 a.m. and loaded our mountain of duffles, ski bags and backpacks onto the roof of his trusty Landcruiser. After checking in at the Poytakht Hotel and sitting down for a relaxing breakfast, we took a few hours to settle in. Sleep came more easily to some team members than others, and by lunch time it was back to the all-important last minute preparations.

Shopping at the Green Market, Dushanbe. Food for 30 days on a glacier can be a complicated affair

Managing 30 days worth of food for five hungry ski mountaineers is not as easy task, but with no food caches on this trip we have no other choice. Breakfast consist of muesli and oatmeal with powdered milk, dinners are a rotating menu of ramen noodles, pasta and rice with dehydrated meats and vegetables.  Lunches are a mix of breads, cured meats, cheeses, dried fruits, nuts and chocolate snacks. Water will be purified from streams during the approach and exit of the glacier, and melted from snow once we are travelling on the ice. Each of us also needs to carry four liters of fuel each for cooking and melting drinking water.

It will be a monstrous burden to shoulder, especially for the approach onto the toe of the glacier. However, once on the ice our sleds will lighten the load by allowing us to drag majority of our gear and supplies. We have tried to get the best information we can on the conditions of our entry and exit, but at this point we will just have to wait and see.

From Holly, Emelie, Selena, Zeb and Vince, we'd like to thank you for taking an interest in our project over the last few months. You can stay updated on our movements on the Flow of the Fedchenko Facebook page, provided by our inReach SE two-way satellite communicator.

See you on the other side!

VS

Did you know 'barf' means 'snow' in Tajik? Must be why we say "puking snow"

Training update: Reality Check

A sample of things to come. Vince drags the supply sled up the access road to Elfin Lakes

With now less than 25 days until departure, the reality of this expedition is beginning to set in. Transporting all of of our food, fuel and equipment across the Fedchenko for a month is going to get exhausting, and at times, painful.
It's not the kind of thing you want to experience at 5000 m altitude for the first time.

Training Day

With our team spread out all over the West Coast and interior BC this season, it's been hard to get together for another session of group training. Much of the party had not even met each other before, so we locked in the week of March 17-21 to get into the field and practice hauling weight and pulling each other out of crevasses. Emelie was unfortunately unable to attend with her guiding commitments, but the rest of us knew that this trip was vital to our overall success on the Fedchenko. 

Our original plan was to traverse the McBride range, a four day Coast Range classic that links the Spearhead Range to Black Tusk. About a week out we found out why people only head out on this traverse in the springtime, when weather is reliably sunny for up to a week. The McBride does not have the convenient exit routes that are available around the fringes of Garibaldi Park so if you get weathered out half way through, the retreat can quickly turn into a miserable death march, as Lee Lau's group experienced in the spring of 2007.

We made a plan B that would take us into the Callaghan/Brandywine area, but after our car load of broke skiers refused to pay a certain recreational provider's extortionate trail fees, we deferred to the well known Elfin Lakes area of Squamish. Weather was due to come in that night, so we set up our first camp a few hundred meters from the Elfin Lakes shelter. That way we could use the outhouses, but still go through the motions of setting up and taking down camp.

A pre-trip gear explosion on the living room floor at Vince's house

Day 1 camp

The storm did indeed hit, bringing about 15 cm of snow overnight. The next morning involved digging out our tents and otherwise trying to keep the rest of our gear dry. All challenges that will be a daily routine when weather hits us on the Fedchenko.

Enough Rope

One of the most important skills in glacier travel is knowing how to set up rope rescue systems effectively. With the group having been taught various techniques, we thought it wise to get everyone attuned to the same method of setting anchors, rigging pulleys and hauling our glacier partners out of trouble. Zeb is the most proficient rope technician on the team, so we followed his lead on digging t-slot anchors, tying Munter mule overhand knots and extracting our victim with a z-pulley. Carrying out this exercise on snow - with an actual person weighing on the end of the rope- was so much more effective than an indoor training session.

As part of his guide training, Zeb also needed to be able to construct an emergency shelter within a 20 minute window, which he demonstrated later that afternoon. A simple trench with room for two people and a lightweight tarp secured to skis and poles. Hopefully we'll be spending every night in out tents on the Fedchenko, but it's always best to be prepared for the worst if we get caught some distance from our base camp.

Zeb demonstrates his emergency bivvy, constructed in less than 20 minutes

Holly and Zeb test the emergency bivvy shelter

Traveling show

The next day it was time to break camp, getting into the groove of packing the camping equipment in the right order to be the most efficient with time and effort. Everything will be several times harder at high altitude, so getting the little things dialed in is all-important.

The four of us roped up on the skin track and headed for the east side of Paul Ridge, taking turns to drag the supply sled. Communication while on rope was crucial, as was keeping to a steady pace. After setting up camp for our third night, we allocated the rest of the afternoon for more training on lowering a victim in a sled and passing a knot. It's more difficult than it sounds, and while in theory it's the same knot over and over, the birds nest of cords and carabiners can get confusing for those not trained in the art. It was a long afternoon, but we all came away having learned something new.

On Friday the sun came out for our exit back to the car, passing the dozens of Vancouver skiers coming up to stay at the Elfin Lakes shelter for the weekend. Lunch in Squamish was a treat after three nights in the backcountry, we could only imagine what it will feel like after 30 days in the Pamirs.

VS

Four of the five members of Team Flow get together.

Hauling the sled with beautiful views of the Mamquam Icefields

Atwell will have to wait for another trip

Testing the new Sherpa 100 from our sponsor Goal Zero

Great times in the cooking tent

Team Flow named 2014 Polartec Challenge Grant Winners

Exciting news from Team Flow this week- we were one of four parties selected for funding by the Polartec Challenge Grant!
We are humbled to have received support from Polartec, which has funded over 100 expeditions around the world since 1991. Past recipients have included some of our greatest inspirations, including Andrew Maclean, Jimmy Chin and Conrad Anker.

The grant has also coincided with two more members committing to Team Flow's expedition to the Fedchenko Glacier in Tajikistan.

Selena  Cordeau has an impressive resume of ski traverses through the mountains of British Columbia and Yukon, as well as 21 day traverse through the High Atlas in Morocco. She will bring her experience and knowledge as a glaciology technician to the team. Selena has received numerous research and expedition grants, including the Alpine Club of Canada Jen Higgins Fund.

Zebulon "Zeb" Blais brings a wealth of ski mountaineering experience to Team Flow, working as a ski guide  and avalanche course leader in mountains from Alaska to Argentina. His travels have taken him to 15 countries over five continents, summiting peaks and experiencing cultures of the developing world.

As we begin to make final preparations just 60 days from departure, this grant will help with travel expenses for Selena and Zeb as well as assisting with ground costs once we touch down in Tajikistan. The Polartec Challenge Grant joins the ACC Jen Higgins Fund and Mountain Equipment Co-op as the signature sponsors of our expedition. We thank you for your support!

VS

Training in full swing, preparations continue

Jason and Holly cross Trorey Glacier in Spring conditions

Recent storms have reinvigorated the winter spirit in Whistler, but in January it was still mostly dry with minimal snow coverage. The Spearhead Range was still crevasse country on January 24, so the Whistler section of Team Flow (Holly and Vince) set out to spend a full day negotiating its fissured glaciers. Joining the full day tour was Jason Amerlaan from Squamish, an expert climber and experienced backcountry skier. Jason seemed just as happy as us to walk for 30 km over almost 11 hours with no powder turns, so he was welcome to join in on the suffering. As well as offering excellent guidance on negotiating rocky down climbs, his home made energy bars proved to be both tasty and effective.

We set off from the Blackcomb Glacier gate as soon as it opened, knowing that daylight hours were going to be short. Holly had been recovering from a couple weeks of illness and was treating the day as warm up for training. I had climbed Black Tusk two days earlier and was ready to start hauling a heavier pack, so I loaded up my 70L pack with camera gear, water and soup cans as well as all my regular touring gear.

Crevasses were still lingering at the end of January

There had only been one significant storm since the last mission when Emilie was in town in December, so the glaciers were still ridden with hazards. Gaining Decker and crossing onto the Trorey Glacier was routine enough, but once we reached Tremor Glacier we had to start watching our step. We all started to get a better eye for spotting crevasses from a safe distance, by observing the depressions in the glacier and giving the school bus-sized holes a wide berth. We stopped at midday for lunch at the Tremor-Shudder Col  for lunch, the usual turnaround point for the Spearhead Traverse. Past that point, it's just as quick to finish off the loop than to backtrack.

Tank tops in January on the Spearhead Traverse

The weather was like Spring, with temperatures as high as 7 degrees C with a cloudless sky. Much of the day was spent touring just in our base layers, with water needing constant rationing. Though there was no powder to speak of, we did lay out a few creamy turns on the Ripsaw. Thankfully we were in the shade of northern slopes for the hottest parts of the day.

Diavolo. Always an ass kicker

Every time I tour the Spearhead Traverse (this was my fourth circuit), I always dread climbing Diavolo. It's the last real punch of vertical on the route, so if you can make it up Diavolo, you're pretty much home free. Feeling confident with the soup cans not able to break me yet, I took off up the climb with gritted teeth. On the final few hundred meters before the col I began to feel dizzy, and Jason offered me some of his fruit-rich energy bars. I made it to the col and sat down and ate most of my remaining food, knowing that the worst was behind me. Holly wasn't far behind, the last weeks of flu not able to phase her.

Downclimbing onto Overlord. Jason was the only one confident enough to do it with skis and pack

We started to dream about beer and burgers, but we weren't done yet. Accessing the Overlord Glacier is usually a quick ski down, but with the snowpack at the time we ended up having to down-climb on rocks to avoid a lengthy detour. Rock climbing in ski boots was new for all of us, but with a bit of teamwork, we all made it down safely.

On the home stretch, reaching for headlamps

We reached the Fissile Whirlwind Col just as the sun began to disappear behind the McBride Range. Normally this is where you b-line for Singing Pass (the express exit to Whistler Valley), but with the snowpack at lower elevations questionable, we played it safe and toured back over the Musical Bumps, over Flute and exited through the resort on Whistler Mountain. Dodging snow cats under headlamps, we made it to Skier's Plaza and proceeded straight to Blacks for those beers and burgers.

Stay tuned for some exciting announcements from Team Flow! We are now less than three months away from departure on the biggest adventure of our lives.

VS