Jaws

Well, what a fine day to neglect to carry a camera! Mr. Weible and I headed out to Shark Valley on a pristine blue sky Rocky Mountain day, with hardly a soul to be seen on the Smith Dorien Highway. Having basked in the delights of spinning on the tarmac through last weekend's premature warmth, we have now plunged right back into the minus 20s of winter - which to our delight kept everybody else indoors and left Mt Shark for us to attack unencombered by crowds (or anybody else what so ever). Fortunately the air was dead calm, as after I had proclaimed that "it's not that cold", once we began to slide along on the skis, the windchill soon began to rip away at my face and bring the temp down to somewhere in the "NorthPole on a bad day" range. Having only plumped for Mt Shark on a last minute whim on the drive out to the mountains, we were rather ill equipped for route finding, that being a lack of map, lack of trail knowledge seeing as though neither of us had ever been there before, and a good lack of concern on both of our behalves. Brad reassured me by confirming that he had his headtorch so all was O.K.
Mt Shark lies on the west side of the Spray Valley and is just sublime - being one of the starting points to Mt. Assiniboine. There is a comprehensive network of very well maintained xc ski trails which we began out on, but once we found ourselves on the edge of the trails, an untracked gap up through the trees seemed a much more exciting option than gliding along the trackset highway.
So up we went, breaking trail through the trees on our very skinny skis which were hailed to be 'light touring skis' when purchased - but which do very little for keeping you above the deep untracked snow (to which my aching knees and hips do attest as both attempted to jetisson from their sockets on a memorable descent through crusty deep snow as my left ski decided to sink down to my hip taking the leg with it, whilst my right ski (and leg) prefered to maintain a rather swift acceleration down the slope, twirling me around like a weeble on acid and resulting in one of those external whoofing lung emptying exhalations of breath accompanied by the internal cry of 'fuck me that stings a bit').
Fortunately, Weible has a touch more finess on the planks, and we carried on bashing our way through the snow like two kids in a sweetshop. After an hour of this we begin to discuss sensible navigation ideas - such as viewing specific summits and not following certian vallies etc... although this went hand in hand with the agreement that there was no way we were going back the way we came, purely due to a complete dislike for backtracking. We kept on following our noses, up and down and around - and we knew it was a good day when Brad mentioned that good old Ken P. would be proud of us for being in the situation where there is good potential to be really, really lost and have a rather spectacular backcountry epic.
Having hyped this day up, it may sound like a let down that we eventually found our way back onto the other side of Mt Shark, and that there was no pursuit by hungry wolves, or necessity to hack of a limb with a blunt leatherman. Nevertheless, a fine winter day for a last minute decision on a Saturday morning, I'll just make sure to remember the camera next time...
Everything else is exactly as you'd expect (make of that what you will),
All good in the Great White North,
don't forget your compass,
S&S.