The idea is simple – follow a continuous ski season along the horseshoe of Pacific coast mountains from Asia to North and then South America.
Austrians Mark and Beate Buzinkay launched the Ring of Fire ski odyssey in January in central China (not quite coast mountains, they admitted), travelling by bus, train, ferries, cabs, hitchhiking and walking, and sourcing out accommodations through www.couchsurfing.org to explore backcountry skiing opportunities for 15 months.
“The idea was for an endless winter,” Mark said. “Backcountry skiing for more than a year around the Pacific, to follow our passion, make new friends, learn from other mountaineers – people like us – and get new ideas for the next 10 years of our lives.”
In Japan, they skied Mount Fuji and returned to their tent to discover two beers and a friendly note in Japanese. They also rode the Tokyo subway with their backpacks and skis in rush hour.
“That was a sweating experience,” Mark said.
In South Korea, they connected with a new friend made online.
“We saw a YouTube of a guy skiing; he’s probably the only backcountry skier in South Korea,” Mark said. Skiing 1,000-metre mountains with him was “surprisingly good.”
Flying north to Kamchatka, Russia, the only place they hired guides, the couple spent five hours being towed behind a snow cat to reach a hut where they became stormbound for the next three days.
“There was no way to get out,” Mark said. “You open the door, dig yourself out. I was afraid to go too far; I did once and almost didn’t find my way back to the hut.”
The good skiing began in Alaska in March, where the couple also experienced -20 C temperatures while travelling in their camper van which they had shipped from Hamburg, Germany.
“We were lucky, we had 10 days of sunshine, good avi conditions,” Beate said. “But the heater in our van stopped working below -10 C. I froze my contact case – you only do that once.”
Hopping a ferry from Juneau, Alaska to Bellingham, Wash. they made a ski ascent of Mount Baker, then drove to Whistler and ski toured off the Duffy Lake Road. Next they visited Revelstoke and Rogers Pass, B.C., where they enjoyed ski ascents of Youngs Peak, Lookout and Sapphire cols before reaching Yoho National Park and the Rockies, where they skied springtime classics including Cathedral Mountain, Mounts Field and Hector, and a variation of the Wapta Icefields traverse.
And while their three-day Wapta adventure delivered a trademark variety of seasonal weather conditions ranging from bluebird sunshine to howling whiteout, the Austrian couple appreciated including the Canadian Rockies in their itinerary.
“It was a great tour despite a whiteout on day two around Mount Balfour,” Mark said. “We had great camaraderie in the mountains.”
It was mountain camaraderie in the first place that encouraged them to include the Rockies on their Ring of Fire adventure. While travelling in Iceland prior to the trip, they made a new friend who insisted they contact his buddy, long-time Rockies adventurer Pat Morrow. They did, and Morrow organized their multi-day Wapta Icefields tour, joining them for part of it.
With huts booked for the Easter long-weekend, and accompanied by three Calgary skiers, the group travelled from south to north – opposite to the customary direction.
Day one from the trailhead at West Louise Lodge delivered warm spring sunshine and stellar high-alpine views across Sherbrooke Lake, past Mount Niles to the Alpine Club of Canada’s Scott Duncan Hut. Clouds rolled in overnight and a storm erased all visibility.
“The next morning we needed to shovel our way out with half a metre of snow piled at the front door,” Mark said.
Relying on map, compass and GPS, the group roped up and navigated through whiteout conditions over Balfour high col, skiing down past gaping crevasses to the comfort of Balfour Hut.
“Easter Sunday we celebrated accordingly with chocolate eggs,” Mark said. Celebratory beer had to wait until day three, after they skied over Mount Olive-Saint Nicholas Col, and out via Bow Lake.
Travelling with a small library of guidebooks in the vehicle to provide them with route information not available online, the couple plans to continue on to Washington and Oregon, where they hope to ski the big volcanoes, Mount Saint Helens and Shasta. They plan to reach Bogota, Colombia by June, then Ecuador, where they hope to ski another volcano, Cotopaxi. From there they’ll carry on to Peru and Bolivia.
By mid-September they’ll board a plane for New Zealand’s South Island in time for the spring skiing season.
“Then I think our ski season will finally be over,” Beate said.
No sooner had she said this, than they began discussing potential options – climbing in Indonesia, perhaps skiing in Colorado next winter. Their current plan, they admitted, is to return to Austria by March, 2015.
Travelling is their way of life, they explained, planning skiing and rock climbing adventures in interesting places. Prior to their Ring of Fire adventure, their longest trip was three months in South America and Australia. They were married in South Africa, “without skis,” Beate added.
“Travelling is great, you meet so many interesting people along the way. You’re invited into people’s homes, you eat with them, ski with them,” Mark said.
Planning their big Ring of Fire journey took more than a year as they sorted travel logistics and researched accommodation options. Financing came about through savings from their jobs – she’s a gynecologist, he’s an IT consultant – and travelling as frugally as possible, including sleeping and cooking in their van in -20.
“But now, we’re thinking maybe we don’t have to be home until June,” Beate said.
Visit www.super-gsi.net/neues to learn more.
