Dean invited me to join him and his friend Alexis for an overnight into Whistler area up into Russet Lake, and of course I couldn't say no despite the thing that I cloud barely ski at that point.
We left Vancouver pretty early and found a pay parking in the village which in the end wasn't that bad for 2 days.
The village was pretty busy even that early in the morning, lots of people were loading up while we were getting our gear ready.
It took us a while until we finally reached the alpine and we started to have some views.
All of us were pretty low on energy by the time we got higher up but we still had lots of time left in the day.
We were lucky since there was some old tracks that we could follow all the way to the lake, so we didn't had to do a lot of navigation up there.
Soon we reached the hut and got inside that small and cozy hut.
It was pretty windy outside and we were happy to be in that hut but it felt that was colder in the hut than outside.
After a cold night we woke up pretty early to have our early breakfast and watch that morning light.
Soon we left the hut towards Whirlwind Peak.
The glacier was pretty filled in and it had only few visible big crevasses.
As we were getting higher the wind was stronger and was pretty cold up there.
At some point near the summit the snow got pretty icy where me and Dean decided to boot pack the section.
Once we got on the summit we had some beautiful views but it was so cold, we just wanted to start our ski back down to the hut.
Since I wasn't that great at skiing I took my time going down while Dean and Alexis were waiting for me.
Once we got at the hut we got all our gear packed and started our way out.
For our way out the plan was to follow the ski runs and take the gondola down once the snow runs out.
On one of the hills Dean's skins weren't sticky anymore so he had to take out his stove and heat them up a bit before he was able to continue again.
Once we got to the runs Alexis and Dean started skiing pretty fast and I couldn't keep up to them, since I've never been in Whistler it was pretty hard to know which way they went.
At some point I couldn't see them anymore and I got to a point where there was few runs and all of them had fresh tracks so I decided to take the one going down which I later found out that was the wrong one.
Then I decided to skin back up and try to find another skier and ask him for directions.
Once I got back up to the spot where I last saw Dean and Alexis I was lucky to see another group of skiers that gave me directions where to go towards the village.
But I was going way slower than that group so they passed me pretty fast, and soon I had a ski patrol that stopped by me and was so kind to ski down to the gondola with me.
Once I got down I met with Alexis and Dean who were waiting for a while.
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