And I think that's what made it a very successful trip for us,
because each day we were just like, oh my god, that was amazing.
And the other part, too, being at sea level,
you're like, oh, we can climb about 7,000 feet today
and just ski amazing snow with very little risk,
looking at the ocean and have an amazing time.
And for me, that's recalibrated as I've gotten older.
For me, those are more important than skiing a steep line,
which I hate to admit, but eventually all the steep lines
I've skied, I kind of forget them.
Like I can remember little bits and pieces.
They seemed super important at the time,
like worth risking one's life for.
But 10, 15 years later, I'm like, oh, I kind of remember
who I did that with and I remember a little bit about it,
but not that much.
Whereas I got to say, on this trip,
I don't think I'm going to forget that anytime soon.
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All right, let's get to the show.
All righty, Jeff, Jeffrey, Jefferson, welcome back.
Danger day.
Good to see you.
Welcome back to both the podcast and to the states.
We were just in Iceland for,
well, you were there for six days, seven days.
I was there for a little longer.
It outblended together.
I think it was a week,
but man, it felt like significantly more.
Yeah, it was crazy how having such little nighttime
led to the whole trip feeling like
sort of one really long day of adventuring, not like a week.
Just to set the scene,
we were leaving Colorado just kind of right as
the snowpack here is starting to get more predictable.
You know, we're starting to get those warmer days.
The corn was starting to be harvestable.
And then we left to,
had Iceland where we, well, all of us,
the whole crew we were with know nothing about the snowpack.
And it was super wintery when we got there.
Yeah, it was completely different conditions.
You know, we went from T-shirt to straight up
layer, layer, layer, layer.
And the kind of the craziest part about it was,
I just remember being in the airport
when I was in Reykjavik,
it started looking at the avalanche report for Iceland,
you know, and trying to see like where we were gonna be.
They fully know where we were gonna be.
But it was a shocking avalanche report
because I've never seen it say,
we were at considerable danger, like that's fine.
But then it said we had a wind slab
and an old snow problem,
which persistent layers in a coastal snowpack
are pretty uncommon.
It's like something that we've talked about on this.
And also just we've, you know, we know this.
I guess Iceland had a really weird kind of tail end
of their winter where it just got cold
and then just stayed cold.
Just kept stacking storm and it got an old snow layer.
And was it one incident or two incidents?
A couple of people got caught.
It doesn't sound like anyone was killed.
The best part I saw was the snow cat at the ski area
above the house we stayed at triggered a D3
right on the side of the trail.
It was like, whoa.
And you see the snow cat and it looks like a toy snow cat
because the D3 is so big.
Oh my God.
Okay, so that all happened before we got there.
And the crazy thing was like, yeah,
it said D3s and D4s even could be triggered on all slopes.
I've never seen the whole compass all blacked out.
Like the critical danger zone was 100% of the zones.
Yeah, so to recap, you're getting on the plane
and you're seeing considerable danger.
So human triggered avalanches are likely,
right, you got old snow problem.
And we know that old snow problem kills about 95%
of the victims and you also have a wind slab
and there are gonna be D3s, which is like destroy a car
or wood framed house to D4s, which means a village
or a forest, old growth forest.
So it's pretty intimidating, right?
Yeah, it was definitely,
well, I definitely it was over my pay grade.
As far as, you know, our plan was I was gonna hop off
the plane and then you guys were gonna snag me
and acuraity and we were gonna just head off to go ski
because you guys had been there for a day already.
Yeah, so I was gonna go like go on the lag.
And we go ski right off the plane.
Exactly, yeah.
So I was like, well, how are we gonna manage this?
Because, well, because of all the factors we just said,
I was completely over my head.
I had no idea how to handle this.
So maybe figured we could walk through this a little bit.
Not just the first day, but the whole week we were there,
conditions were changing really rapidly,
something we learned about Iceland quickly,
which sounds silly to say out loud now,
but it's sort of the Arctic.
And so things changed there even more rapidly
than in Colorado, what we're used to.
So we had to really adapt quickly
and we had to have a good game plan going into the day
of if this isn't gonna work,
or if we get somewhere and the conditions are different
than what we thought, like what's our plan B,
what's our plan C, et cetera.
So I thought it'd be cool if we could just maybe
kind of do an Iceland debrief
and then maybe talk about how we went about planning
and staying within our safety guidelines
in a totally new environment
with rapidly changing conditions
and super high consequences to be frank,
probably the most dangerous conditions we were in all season.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I think the first part is changing our mindset.
And instead of being like,
hey, we're gonna go really aggressive, it's like, whoa.
We are gonna go conservative and we're gonna go beautiful.
And hold up, just to give everyone the full view,
the reason we had to change our mindset
was because you kind of pitched this idea
as like we're gonna go ski corn in Iceland.
Because I thought you did last year.
Yeah, mid-April.
Yeah.
So we were all expecting that.
That's why we had to have this big shift
in our whole game plan,
because we were like, cool,
we have to be t-shirt weather,
we're gonna be skiing steep corn,
it's gonna be awesome.
And then winter struck
and we were in a totally different situation.
So continue from there.
We had to adjust our mindset.
So the professionals,
we would call this your strategic mindset.
And you could be very conservative
all the way to very aggressive.
And that informs, hey,
like sets the expectations in the organization
and to the clients.
And says, hey, are we stepping out today
because it's gonna be more aggressive
because conditions are very favorable
or are we falling back
because we've got a big storm
and conditions aren't favorable
or are we in trenchment?
Meaning nothing's changed.
We're dealing with a persistent weak layer
and old snow problem.
And we just have to be conservative
because there's no way to manage this.
You can't just use your guide wizard hat
and wave the wand and say,
it'll be okay because I say it's okay.
And like you said,
the weird thing was the persistent weak layer
was everywhere.
And we were like, oh, that's not fair.
You can't avoid it.
And so that changed our mindset really quickly.
However, one thing going for us
is we were going to a magical landscape
where if I'm skiing under the setting sun,
looking at the ocean
and the sun reflecting off the water,
I'm so blissed out.
And people in the group,
it brought tears to their eyes
because it was just heart-breakingly beautiful
to ski into the sunset on the Arctic Circle.
And you're like, look, next stop is Greenland,
straight ahead or to your right is the North Pole.
And there's nobody here.
And this is just magic.
And so, changing the mindset and being like,
hey, we thought we were going to be skiing steep coolars
and big faces with spring-like conditions,
probably low danger conditions.
And that wasn't the case.
It was for the 40-year average,
they were saying this was freakishly cold
and it was full winter conditions.
And we had a winter snowpack complete
with winter snowpack problems.
So we had to change our mindset.
That was the first part was like, okay,
we are going to tiptoe in through the terrain
and it's going to be about skiing something that's beautiful
rather than rad.
Like there will be no rad on this trip.
And just being like, okay.
And finding out, hey, you know what?
It doesn't have to be super steep
to have the best trip of your life.
And it's a lot about being with good friends,
people you love in a place that's just absolutely magical
and exploring a new culture.
And I've never done this before,
but I imagine my parents are in Albania right now
on a bike tour.
And that's the kind of experience they're having.
It's not rad, but they're eating great food,
traveling through a beautiful country
with people that they love and having an adventure.
And I think that's what made it a very successful trip
for us, because each day we were just like,
oh my God, that was amazing.
And the other part too, being at sea level,
you're like, oh, we can climb about 7,000 feet today
and just ski amazing snow with very little risk
looking at the ocean and have an amazing time.
And for me, that's recalibrated as I've gotten older.
For me, those are more important than skiing a steep line,
which I hate to admit,
but eventually all the steep lines I've skied,
they're kind of, I kind of forget them.
Like I can remember little bits and pieces.
They seemed super important at the time,
like worth risking one's life for,
but 10, 15 years later, I'm like,
oh, I kind of remember who I did that with
and I remember a little bit about it,
but not that much.
Whereas I got to say on this trip,
I don't think I'm gonna forget that anytime soon.
Like the afterglow, the half-life of the trip,
it's still with me.
I don't know, it's the same with you.
I'm still having like Iceland dreams.
Yeah.
But Brunsley, what are you doing?
Why are we not skiing every day?
That was ideal.
Yeah, okay, so I agree with that.
The way we scaled back and we ended up doing it
like kind of more of a tour, literally.
Just finding really cool zones
that we could effectively hit a bunch of different areas.
You know, I guess it's worth maybe telling viewers
or listeners the whole, like it's the ocean.
And then it just kind of goes up in a way,
nothing to these crazy peaks.
And so we could find these zones.
And we should talk about this in a sec
about how kind of every day we had to change.
It was kind of like snowy, swirly every day.
And we kind of had to pick our zones,
depending on like where we thought the patch of sunlight
was gonna be that day,
which meant that we had to be really, really active.
And we couldn't just sit back and be like,
okay, it's snowed everywhere.
We'd be like really active with where was the wind,
where did it come from, where did it go?
Where did this, because for people who don't know,
I mean, Iceland is essentially a giant rock
in a huge river of weather.
So it just has swirling weather.
It's not like in the US where you generally have storms
coming one direction or the other.
It's every angle all the time.
So you have to be really, really aware of that every day.
So we, because of that, we were like, okay,
how do we pick zones where we think,
Jeff, I'll let you say it.
So put ourselves in a position to get lucky.
Position to get lucky.
There's a high degree of uncertainty about snow quality.
And that's one of the things as I get older
as a mountain guide where I used to feel responsible
for the snow quality and feel like, oh man,
you know, hasn't snowed in two weeks,
the winds of hammer, the sun is hammered,
it's gonna be crap, but I have to produce
a great quality ski day.
And I used to equate that with snow quality.
And then I realized, wait a minute,
there's so much more about this.
There's the cultural experience of being in another country,
the food, the drink, the views, the terrain,
and the camaraderie of exploring the unknown
with good friends.
And those are all super important components
to making a really successful trip.
And you don't go to the Arctic maritime of Norway
or Iceland to ski the best snow quality of your life.
I'm sorry, you can find that much better in Utah or Colorado
where you're gonna reliably get blower power
or Hokkaido or something like that.
However, you can't get views like that anywhere.
And you're not, the way the light is in the Arctic,
it's totally different and skiing to the water
is super magical.
So, you know, I would often be really upfront
and be like, hey guys, here's two options for today.
Here's what I'm thinking.
And I think we're gonna find reasonable snow quality there,
but there'll be some marginal snow
as well, but I think based on the weather patterns
that we've seen, the winds and the precept,
I think these are likely to be decent zones,
but we're gonna have to have an adventure,
meaning the outcome is uncertain.
There is no way to know.
And it was funny talking with my brother
who works for a heli operation up there.
And he was saying like, man, he's like,
I've been up here for I think 11 years now.
And he's like, if you can figure out the patterns reliably,
you let me know because, you know, a lot of it is
we're gonna put ourselves in a position to get lucky,
but we're gonna go have to explore.
And he was comparing how one helicopter
with a couple of groups and the other helicopter
with a couple of groups found radically different
snow conditions just on the other side of the valley.
And they could see each other.
They were that close, but it's that hyper variability.
And so, you know, you look at the weather models,
you look at the cloud cover,
where you think you can get the most sun
and track where the wind direction's coming from
and how it's gonna move through the topography.
But at the end of the day, there's some guesswork involved.
Like we don't know for certain.
And so if you combine that with the uncertainty
of snow quality, with the uncertainty of snow stability,
it can get super overwhelming.
So I found we were using a beta tester
for aspect ABI up there.
And I used it last year, so I knew it worked quite well.
And that took a huge amount of the cognitive load,
the brain load, and I could put that down
because we could all sit down on the laptop
and do the tour plan and be like,
hey, here's our red no-go zones
for the outlandish bulletin that we have.
And now we can visualize the terrain and see.
We actually have quite a few options in this zone
that we're at in the Troll Peninsula.
And we can ski some really beautiful lines
that are super chill and relaxed.
And ideally we're facing west to ski into the sunset
as the sun reflects off the fjord.
And you may not have that access to the beta tester
that we were using, but you can use the similar guidelines.
And at the start of the week, we were at considerable
and then it shifted to scary moderate.
And so for considerable, these are the rules we were using
was keep it under 30 degrees
and stay out of the run-out zones.
And it's really tricky to judge scale there
because there are no trees.
And there are no man-made installations.
So we relied very heavily on the slope angle tool
to check one slope angle underfoot,
the slope angle across from us,
but also the run-out zones.
And that's called the alpha angle.
That's the fancy term for the run-out zone.
And when we were worried about D4s
in a certain zone, we were like,
okay, that is full track.
And so we need to be 18 degrees or less.
And when you sight through the camera on the phone,
it shows that to you in green.
18 and under is green.
And then light green, yellowish green is low risk.
That's like 19 to 22.
And then high risk is in red.
So that's 22 degrees and steeper.
And so that was a super effective tool
for when you're on-siting terrain
and you're trying to gauge,
hey, are we out of the risk of the run-out here?
Because when we had such unpredictable snowpack,
we have to go with reliable terrain.
And this allowed us to quantify,
do we have reliable terrain in the start zone?
Okay, we're keeping it under 30,
but there's big peaks around us.
Are we out of the run-out zone?
Because people, it was rare chance,
but it had happened where people had remotely triggered
and the whole mountain had come down
and we didn't want anything to do with that.
Yeah, and I think it's worth noting
that even when we were doing these quote unquote,
chill skis, like some of the descents
were still almost 4,000 feet.
Yeah, there was not.
So to put it in perspective, there's no trees.
Some of these faces are just,
essentially you drop off a peak and it's unlimited
where you could go.
There's no, we ended up skiing in a different area
where it was way more kind of coolars
and that kind of stuff.
But at this part of the trip,
the stuff we ended up dropping was cool
because it was just this huge 30 degree snow field,
essentially, that you could go down.
But the reason that that's like a double edged sword
is because we had this realization of,
hey, the cool thing about this is we can go do
big unlimited GS turns if you want.
The bad part is, is if we accidentally find
that tricky spot, that whole unlimited face could go,
which is different than here where it's like,
hey, this shoot that we're skiing in could go
or this small face could go.
There, I kind of understand why the D4 was on the table
just because of the sheer scale
of the mountains we were skiing.
Yeah, because it could go all along the ridge line
and there's no terrain feature to stop it.
It's just endless snow fields for miles.
And you're dealing with 4,000 vertical feet,
so that has a little bit of snow.
So where are you gonna go?
Yeah, exactly.
And candidly with guides, the mindset with guides is
on-siting, which means going to new terrain for work
is really exciting, but it's also really stressful
because if you have poor visibility
and poor snow stability, you're like, oh my gosh.
And having a terrain visualization tool
that you can lean on to be like, well, all this stuff is out
and hey, we've got these options here.
Okay, which of these options do we think
is gonna have reasonably good snow quality?
Okay, we're going there.
And that's how we put ourselves into a position
to get lucky.
And later on in the week, when it was scary moderate
and we changed forecast zones and it was no more D4s.
It was D3s and scary moderate.
So D2 to D3.
We're like, okay, 32 degrees and under
and stay out of the runout zones.
And we use the Alf angle, the runout tool quite a bit
for our regroup zones,
because we're like, hey, we're right about 30 degrees here.
We're towing into avalanche terrain
and there's big slopes around us.
We've got enough buffer, but we have to be very clear
about where we're gonna regroup
and everyone could sight through the runout tool
on the camera, on the phone and be like, oh, that's the spot.
See that little raised island of rock there?
That's where we're going.
And I was always surprised how it was much farther
than my eye would have said to go.
Like my gut would have said, oh, Dave, stop down there.
It'll be fine.
And then when we shot it, I was like,
there is no sense of scale in this landscape.
And I'm being overly optimistic.
Like if something runs Jason to our slope or on our slope,
we wanna make sure we're well out of the runout zone.
Yeah, and just the fact of,
which I think we all kind of talked about
by the second day or something,
maybe the third day, I don't remember,
but we were realizing that every time we ended up skiing,
one of these faces ended up being such a longer descent
than we thought because of that scale.
Yeah, and we are all kind of joking about,
man, if like you couldn't really outrun something
because you have no idea how long
you're gonna have to outrun it.
And the whole 45 degree angle thing,
yes, in theory it works,
but like we just talked about,
like you could just keep ripping a whole face
as you kept going.
So I think the whole,
it was a really interesting exercise
in taking all this stuff that we know to be true
and stuff that I've been learning over this past season,
just hanging out with people like you
and then sort of trying to apply those rules,
but in like a really shaken up way.
Oh, because you're out of your normal mountain range
environment?
Well, yeah, just because all of a sudden everything
about what we knew had to be tweaked and toggled
and sort of, you know.
But yeah, I guess if we do kind of way,
we just don't know how big things are.
Yeah, I don't know.
I think what you're just talking about with
just the scale and how far away things were
really struck me with,
there's plenty of times where we all thought,
hey, like that's a good regroup zone
because it's out of the angle,
but then when we'd cite it,
turns out it was still totally in the slide path
because it was way closer than we thought it was.
We thought it was a mile away
and it was half a mile away or whatever.
And then we'd have it the opposite way too,
where we'd be like, oh, that thing's too close.
And then we'd shoot it and we'd be like, oh my God,
that thing's so far away.
Yeah.
Like that's bizarre.
It was kind of like a, I'm sure,
I mean, you've definitely guided all over the place,
but being on this trip and then you did a really good job
of including us in the whole process.
You know, it wasn't very much a team effort.
You would definitely come up with the zones,
but then we as a team would kind of ideate
on what our plan would be.
And it was cool just being a part of that
and like a totally new zone.
Yeah.
It makes me think of, I saw this amazing David Byrne exhibit.
It was this experiential art exhibit
and it takes maybe an hour and a half or something.
And I think it's called something like perceptions
of the mind or, and it's all about cognitive science,
but done through art.
So it was like in this Denver warehouse
and you had a tour guide through the night
who was David Byrne and he was walking you through episodes
of his life and it was basically about how unreliable
our senses are.
So hearing, sight, taste, touch, everything.
And it was such a wackadoodle experience
that it felt like it went by in like 15 minutes
instead of an hour and a half.
So that was kind of trippy as well.
But it reinforced that what we know to be true.
Well, it just maybe ain't so.
And I love that saying, let's see if I can recall it.
It says, it ain't the things you don't know that gets you.
It's the things you know for certain that just ain't true.
And when we used our eye, we're like, oh, that's just like,
you know, a couple of turns and it would go forever.
And that idea of being able to judge slope angle
or overhead hazard or, you know,
where the runout zone was gonna end,
having an objective tool that doesn't lie to you
was so much more reliable than our eyes.
And, you know, we had fair bit of experience in our group
and we were all continuously surprised to the trip
out how our eyes would deceive us.
And it often met the ways as well
because the light was the color and the shade.
Yeah, it was pretty wild.
Yeah, I was having, so you guys left
and I stuck around for five days to go help a buddy
with a film project that just happened to be going on there.
And we, this was a theme throughout the whole trip
because I was flying drones while we were there
to just get shots of what we were doing.
And I kept posting up in places that I was trying
to put myself in places that was sort of equidistant
from the top to where they were gonna stop
and putting myself out of the way
but then still line a site for the FPV and all that stuff.
And there'd be plenty of times where I'd be like, cool,
I'm about halfway and then I'd get the drone in the air
and I'd be flying for like a mile.
To get up there.
And it was just like, dude, how tall is this mountain?
What, like, I was still using, I remember a couple of times
using the slope angle tool to figure,
to help me figure out where I wanted to stand.
So like I would be out of their way just in general
and then also whatever, just in case a different peak ripped
whatever, just to be out of the runoff.
And you'd be like angling up at it and be like,
okay, that doesn't look so far away.
But then as you get up, you know, there's this huge rollover
that keeps going and you're like, oh, well, maybe,
maybe that's not as safe as I thought.
If there's this big rollover that's there,
like that could still potentially slide.
But yeah, man, it was, it was definitely, I wanted to,
I want to, I guess have two things before we end this whole thing,
which would be, one, it would be really cool to give people
some, I guess just reminders or useful tools to use
when they're in new places.
Like I know for me, something we started using
that was really handy was this app called Windy,
which is just like this, it's just a wind forecast app.
But actually in Iceland, it was super handy.
Like I'd never used that before, but then being able to see
where the wind is going to be coming in for like 24 hours
before we went to a zone was actually super handy
because wind slab was a problem there.
And so we were like, okay, cool.
We know all the wind was coming from the Southwest
for the last two days.
You know, that gives us a better idea of what to not go step on.
What for you, what for you would be other tools
that are helpful for people in new places?
Like we can't use AspectAvi in Iceland yet.
That'll come one day.
But you know, kind of let's give people some useful tools
for touring in a new place.
Yeah, yeah.
I think there's a couple of weather apps
that are super handy.
Windy is one that people like.
Meteo Blue is quite handy as well.
And there's some powerful tools in there
to help you visualize cloud cover and density
and what elevations and things like that.
And when you're skiing above tree line,
that is super important.
And then you can also check the timing
of when you might get a little window of sun.
And you know, that was pretty funny is to be like,
hey, we're leaving the house at four
and we'll be done skiing at nine.
Yeah.
And sun sets at 10.
Okay.
And then Twilight is kind of all night.
Yeah, it was crazy.
And that's our weather window.
And it kind of works out well if you're jet lags
from the from Western US too.
So it stays a little more in sync with your body clock.
So it feels like that.
And then the local forecast tool,
having a little sense about it,
like the Avalanche Forecasting Center in Iceland
is relatively recent.
So it's not a super mature organization.
And every forecasting center when it comes online,
there's going to be some growing pains.
And that is not a knock in any way.
They have an incredibly difficult challenge there
because it's hyper variable from valley to valley
and even slope to slope.
We're like, they're all the same aspect.
It's the same elevation, but this is garbage.
And if we go over here a couple hundred meters,
it's amazing.
I've got no plausible explanation.
I could sound all guidey and try to steamroller you guys,
but I'm like, I don't know why it is,
but that's the better snow.
We're going there.
And so that hyper variability is really tricky.
And we experienced that on a peak where we were getting up
around 900 meters off the sea level.
So about 3000 feet and we were down in our base layer.
I remember you guys got a little ahead of me.
We weren't in avalanche strain and we had radio.
So it was pretty relaxed.
And I was like, guys, I'm sorry, I got to stop and get all the way
to my son hoodie base layer because I am just sweating.
And then about 10 minutes later, you guys had said,
you made an executive decision before I even got there.
Like we are going down because it got so damn cold so fast
in like 10 minutes.
And we had like every layer of clothing on swing in our hands.
We're like, what the heck just happened?
So when you get these wild temperature and wind variations
that are hyper localized, you're also going to have a large
amount of variance and uncertainty with your avalanche forecast.
And so the year before when I had been there,
it had rained for days top to bottom and it was low danger corn,
snow and blue skies every day.
So there were very little uncertainty.
It was like ice throughout this whole snowpack, perfect corn.
It's low danger.
And there was a high degree of certainty.
But when we got there, it was total wackadoo conditions
and keeping in mind that it's a huge area with relatively few observations.
It's not like the wasatch where there's a million skiers out there
every day in a couple small canyons.
You know, it is a very relatively large area with high degree of variability.
So keeping that in mind and taking the forecast for the grain assault.
And we know the forecast just like the weather forecast, it can be wrong.
So ground truthing that and, you know, shameless product plug,
but it's there for a reason.
If you verify the forecast and aspect avi, even if you're in a place
that aspect avi doesn't work yet because we haven't gotten to Europe yet,
you know, you can use that simple checklist and like, are we getting shooting
cracks, recent avalanches, whoops, rapid loading from sun, from snow
or from wind, or are we getting rapid temperature rise?
If it is, flip the forecast to considerable.
And especially if you're in a place with a paucity of data and a very large area,
you want to go really conservative like that and feel free to pivot at a moment's notice.
I think, you know, that's something that we were really flexible with was
we've got a rough play on the night before, but we're just going to have to wait
and see what the weather is doing.
And we may dash out the door at breakfast or we may sit and chill out,
chill the situation until four o'clock in the afternoon when the weather windows
forecasted to happen.
So I think having that data ahead of time with looking at weather apps
and the avalanche forecast, so you have a general sense of what's going on
and then being really flexible during the day to adjust and not being stuck
on an objective of being like, hey, there's a lot more than just skiing a steep line
to make a really successful trip.
And these are the things that are really important to us.
Coming back home is paramount and having a lot of fun with our friends
and still being friends when we come home is super important.
And it was really easy to make decisions with this group.
We'd weigh the pros and cons and then come to a consensus real quickly.
And I think having some objective data also that we could all look on the map
together and be like, well, all that is red high risk.
We're not tangling with D3s today.
Made it really easy.
And then we could also verify the forecast to make sure that it was
sounding truthy for the slopes that we were on and the conditions we were experiencing.
We could do a now cast.
Yeah, one of my favorite moments of our whole trip together was,
I think it was the third day we were out skiing and we ended up looking out.
It was beautiful sunny day the whole time.
It was only supposed to be a window.
We chose this zone because we figured by the time we got up to,
because I think the top of the peak we were going to was like 1,100 meters.
Like we were, it was almost 4,000 feet.
It was pretty big.
Yeah, it's 1,500 meters.
Yeah, 4,000 feet.
So it was the highest one we did.
And we were like, okay, well, if we start at this time,
then maybe we'll hit the blue sky for our descent.
Turns out it just got blue the second we got out of the car and just stayed blue
until sunset at like 11.
But the funniest part of this whole thing was we ended up going up the wrong mountain
because we like, because you just start walking towards these mountains
and you know, there's these big rollovers that, you know, so like anything
when you're going up some you can't see over all the way to the top.
Like chances are if you see all the way to the top, it's really steep.
You know, that's the way you want to be under it.
But halfway up, we were like, oh, the mountain we're trying to go to is over there.
And we had to make a game time decision.
And we were like, well, the mountain that's right in front of us looks sweet.
And we used the tools that we had at our disposal, which they sort of worked.
We had to be pretty crafty about it at the moment.
But when then we were able to kind of identify that the peak in front of us
was going to be skiable and was within our realm of safety.
And and we are still able to go do it.
But it was definitely an unexpected.
Can you imagine if the weather was worse?
Like where we have ended up, man?
It was beautiful and sunny.
We ended up on the wrong mountain.
That's the people ask me and they say, hey, you know, what do you think about
the risk of people navigating off their phone?
And with zero vis during considerable danger and getting into steep terrain
and remotely triggering.
And I'm like, well, if it's if it's considerable and you're worried about
remote triggers, you don't want to be skiing in avalanche terrain.
We can't see.
And we had these funky rollovers and we'd, you know, at Valley,
we hadn't been to before.
And when we got up about 300 meters, a thousand feet, we were like,
well, our intended route is over here.
And it looks OK.
But man, this one a little bit to the right looks amazing.
And it's not in the red.
It fits our criteria.
You know, it's it's on the run list, meaning it's, you know, is scary moderate
that day.
And so we're like, it's under 32 degrees or under 33 degrees and we can stay
out of the run out zones.
Yeah, that's fair game.
And it looked like it had better snow quality and more consistent pitch to ski
more fall line and super high rewards.
So we ended up doing a second half lap on it because it was so good.
But you're right.
If we had had bad visibility, we would have taken that off the off the run
list.
And I think, you know, the the place we went on day one had way more margins
around us, meaning there was tons of low angle terrain with very few steep
slopes that we would have to avoid.
And that would be a more appropriate place to go if you had poor visibility.
And then the other option we always had is because you never know if the weather
is going to come back in is that, you know, when we're skinning up, we've got
our skin track and that can be a real big help in zero viz because you've got
your skin track to keep hitting on the way down so you don't get seasick
and lose track of where you are.
So that was always in the back pocket as a escape route.
And, you know, if we had had white out conditions from the get go, there was a
peak right across from our house where we skied that had big wide open
chill snow fields of, you know, nice north facing snow, kind of creamy
velvety powder down low.
And, you know, that that would be a more appropriate choice where you're like,
okay, we've got big margins of safety around us.
We're not trying to thread the needle with zero viz.
Three of zero viz.
It was funny.
There was multiple days where we chose a zone specifically because we could
see the ocean.
So if all else failed, we were like, well, all else fails, we don't know
where to go.
We know that generally we'll want to ski towards the ocean because that's
where we're going, which was an experience.
I just, I don't think I can get used to that was so trippy like look for the
sea.
Yes.
It's a day one when we were skiing down.
It was like, okay, here's our compass heading and there's nothing to mark
off because a little cloud bank came in and we were going to get below it.
It was a wispy cloud, but it was really hard to see.
And it lined up our line was perfectly aligned the skiing towards the sun and
the sun reflecting off the fjord.
We're like, well, that worked out really well.
Just aim towards that light, bright glowing orb in the sky and follow me.
Let's go.
Yeah.
Oh, sweet.
Well, let's, let's bore everyone too much with our Iceland tales.
But I wanted to ask you what was your, what was like the most memorable part of
the trip or something that will, something that really stands out to you?
I think it's the combination of sharing experience with people you love and a
magical landscape.
And we got super lucky where we just had these kind of all time tours day after
day and they were very unexpected because the weather was looking pretty rough.
And just, you know, a lot of the train we are in, we were skiing blue square
terrain, meaning under 30 degrees and no overhead hazard.
We were out of the run out zone.
And so we could ski together and skiing behind Eli was fucking hilarious.
Just like, it's like kids being like, Hey, you want to go red bikes and just goofing
off and, and, you know, pass and Frank and you guys and, and just goofing off in a
really low stress environment where if we had pushed it, it would have been really
stressful and not nearly as much fun.
And I think in the past I would have had when I was younger in my career, I would
have had that feeling of man, all these guys are rippers.
Like do with these guys were on the pro circuit and I need to deliver the goods,
but the persistent week later could be anywhere according to the bulletin and
D threes and D fours, no way.
That's that's ludicrous.
I can't manage that as a mountain guide.
I'd just be getting lucky.
And so it was great to have a tool where we could just all get on the same page
with touring and everyone was like, yeah, we don't want to mess with that.
We just want to have fun.
And so let's go sniff out the good snow and a lot of the party skiing together
when we're out of avalanche train was just so playful and goofy.
I felt like a bunch of dolphins playing in the waves together and stuff like that.
And then that adventure of, Hey, you know, I think we skied maybe one peak
that I'd skied the year before maybe and the rest was all on-siting.
So it's fun for me to go explore with you guys as well.
And I love that sense of we're not really quite sure how it's going to turn out.
Let's go find out and, you know, you hit a few patches of frozen corn
and to link up the powder patches and kind of don't remember those.
You just remember the good times with your friends.
Totally. Yeah, no, it was definitely, I think one of the most memorable things
for me overall was the mindset was so different of, and when we go out here,
we're familiar with the train.
So we have expectations of this should be this way.
And so we kind of start creating these expectations before you even get out there.
So immediately, if we get out there and it's not the same, we're kind of like,
but with this, it was totally adventure based.
We're like, we think it's going to be this way.
Could be.
Might not be.
The weather could suck.
It might start blizzering.
It might get sunny.
Like we just had no expectations.
And I think that was such a cool way for us to approach that this, this type of skiing.
I kind of just, it made it feel, I don't want to keep saying adventure,
but it made it just made it feel almost more relaxed in a sense of we were all kind of seeing
how it was going as it was going.
And that was, that was a really cool experience, especially when we ended up having,
you know, we got incredibly lucky.
We had so many good days going into it with that mindset and then having the result be these incredible,
incredible runs, like 40 minute runs of just like endless powder at like sunset most days.
So it was just like, I was like checking all these boxes.
I thought that was just, I think that's probably the most memorable thing for me was just that.
The mindset going in, I think produced an environment that allowed us to have a really open,
like open to the conditions and end up delivering us a really epic experience.
Yeah.
You know, it makes me think of a couple of things.
I wonder if one being jet lagged off the plane and swimming most days in the beach in the Arctic Ocean,
if that kind of helped get us into that beginner's mind where you're just open to possibilities and expectations were,
I don't know, I always felt like my expectations were really low where I was like, man, the forecast is not looking good.
Snow quality is not looking good.
And wow, we got lucky again.
And, you know, we did quite a bit of planning to set us up to get lucky,
but I didn't feel like I had much control over the outcome,
which normally as a mountain guide is really uncomfortable feeling as far as the outcome of,
are we going to have good snow quality and good visibility?
Or are we just going to be skiing in the pink bong ball on frozen crust?
Which to me, to be fair, happened to us a couple of times.
But it wasn't, it wasn't like all, yeah, but I think so.
Yeah, I wonder, I wonder if we had that mindset of everyone was in sync of just like open to possibilities,
really low expectations.
And so your H equals R minus E.
So H is happiness is really high when your reality is much bigger than your expectations.
And every day we're kind of like, well, expectations are pretty low.
And then we got out there and we were like, oh, actually it's really good.
So then it felt like we were getting away with something like, how did we get good snow again?
It's supposed to be crap out there.
This is amazing.
Totally.
Yeah.
No, it was, that was a really, really fun trip, man.
Those epic.
I, to anyone who's thinking about going skiing in Iceland, I don't want to blow up the spot
because it's pretty cool and quiet there right now.
But it was, it was really something.
I recommend it.
It was epic.
The other, the other, oh Jeff, I got one more thing that surprised me about our trip.
Yeah.
You eat so much.
Like, yeah, I have to finish with this one story because it is hilarious.
And I told a couple of my friends this story and they were like cracking up.
So we went to see the Northern Lights one night because we, we heard they're going to be popping
off and the only place where there was like a little dot of no clouds was like two hour
and a half away.
Something like that.
We had to hop in the car for a little bit.
So anyway, we go see the Northern Lights kind of like they're kind of through the clouds,
but we saw them and then we're driving home.
Frank was driving.
Thanks, Frank.
And Jeff was asleep, like the whole drive home.
He was just out because it was like, I mean, I don't know what was one thirty.
Two in the morning.
It was late.
You have to wait till it's super dark because the sun, it doesn't get proper dark until
midnight.
But anyway, we, we do this drive, we do this adventure.
We get back to the apartment, to the condos or cabin, whatever.
And it's like two thirty in the morning and I go straight up to like the loft where I'm
sleeping and then I go get my water bottle.
I come down and like get ready for bed and Jeff's just in the kitchen like fully cooking.
He's been asleep for like an hour and a half in the car.
And he's just like fully cooking up like a pasta dish at like two thirty in the morning
and I was just like, oh my God.
And then the best thing about it was just like, dude, are you serious?
Like you're eating right now.
And you're like, yeah, man, I'm super hungry.
Dead serious.
And then you like, I was, you know, man, I'll have some noodles.
It was like totally validated that you were cooking at two thirty in the morning.
I was like, well, all right, I guess I'm the asshole.
I'm going to bed guys.
Yeah.
It was like, well, Dave, if you've ever had a tapeworm, you got to keep those guys.
Yeah, you got to go check, get that checked, man.
I'm concerned about you.
You, your food bill must be so high.
But anyway, well, let's wrap this up.
It was truly an awesome trip.
Like I don't think I'll ever forget it.
And hopefully we get to go again maybe next year or in some years soon.
Do you got any last words for, for the peeps?
Yeah.
I mean, this is a little off topic, but we're really excited to announce that we're offering
AspectAvi free to everyone who downloads it this spring and you can have it free for next
year and for all the early adopters out there, thanks so much for your support.
You'll have it free for next year because you've already downloaded it.
So thanks so much for your support.
We're a hundred percent back country community funded.
We're all on this mission together of saving lives from avalanches and our investors are
excited to share this with everyone.
It's the new standard and avalanche safety, it's preventative proactive avalanche safety
gear.
So heck yeah, store download it.
It's only available on iPhone right now, but hopefully we can change that in the future.
Yeah, man.
That's exciting.
That's awesome.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
We with that, I think we'll wrap this up, man.
It was good, good seeing you and we'll talk soon.
All right.
Sounds good.
Cheers.
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