Wapta Traverse day 2

We woke up to a blue bird sky.

First we had to skin up. Our aim for today was that peak / ridge in the back, South Rhonda.

The view was amazing.

Kerstin on the ridge.

We had an amazing view from the top of South Rhonda. You can see Peyto Lake and the hut.

Two happy skiers. Well, my tooth was starting to bother me. Probably the strong winds and the elevation didn't help.

Kerstin in front of the Yoho Glacier. If you have been in the area: The Yoho Glacier starts from the Yoho Valley where the Takakkaw Falls are, close to Field.

We got some nice skiing in on the way down.

The runs were super long and smooth, pretty amazing, it felt like being on the Autobahn but instead of going 200 we went with a nice leisure pace.

After we had a short lunch break we decided to go up another slope to get some more skiing in.

More climbing :-)

Kerstin shredding it!

Happy skier.

After those two runs we headed back to the hut.

We watched the sun set from inside the hut.

After dinner my tooth started to bother me. First I tried to take a few more pain killers. Since we were up in the mountains we couldn't do much. I was just hoping that after a while the pain killers would help. They didn't and I was under a lot of pain all night long. I probably took three times the maximum allowed dose rate and didn't get any sleep. At 4am (it was still dark) we decided to get up and ski down. We actually did the decision to go down earlier but we wanted to wait till it is bright. To make the decision to go down wasn't easy since you don't do a 7 day ski trip too often and I am not sure if we get the chance to do the Wapta again but at this stage there was just no other opportunity than to go down. After we packed up it was around 4:30 am and it was still dark. We put our head lamps on and roped up. The glacier was pretty safe and luckily it didn't snow so our uphill tracks were still visible. Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to go down that early. Once I got up the pain went away which was nice, I don't think that I would have been able to ski down with the pain I had during the night. Anyway, after 4 hours we arrived at the car and drove to Canmore. We organized an appointment with a dentist (thanks for the help Arndt) but as all the other dentist he didn't know what causes the pain so we decided to drive to Vancouver. With prescription pain killers and lots of water we left Canmore at 8pm and drove 10 hours to Vancouver, thanks a lot Kerstin.

The "minibar" of pain killers.

Back in Vancouver we went to our dentist. Again, he couldn't see what causes the trouble. He wanted to send me to a specialist. He said I get you there right now. After talking to his secretary he came back and said: "Well, I have bad news. All the special dentist are on a conference today. I will open it up, release some pressure and you can go there on Monday."

Opening it up helped a lot and with only a few pain killers now I can handle the pain before I go to the specialist on Monday. Looking at the pictures again makes me a bit sad that we couldn't stay there for 7 days but that's how life is sometimes. We actually got the fees we paid for the hut as a credit with acc so hopefully we can finish the traverse in the summer ...

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