Sawback specializes in week-long trips to the most incredible backcountry ski touring areas on earth. Here’s a selection of our trips for 2019. Book now before we are sold out!
Our Ski and Sail trips to Svalbard this spring will enjoy around the clock sunlight in the Land of the Midnight Sun. Right now is a different story. Here’s a photo from noontime today, looking over the port town of Longyearbyen, where we’ll begin our Ski and Sail trips in May. You can just see a glimmer of light above the horizon as the sun, far to the south, struggles to light the sky at mid-day. Amazing!
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Three spots left.
Burnie Glacier Chalet is located near Smithers in northern British Columbia. It has spectacular, rugged alpine terrain with beautiful ski runs that range in nature from gentle glacier runs that can be done in most conditions to steep tree runs for high hazard days, to incredible ski mountaineering trips high into the alpine ...Trip Details
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Fully booked.
Sunrise Lodge is located at the headwaters of Wisted creek and offers stunning views of Rockies to the west and Purcells to the south. Sunrise is the southern gateway to the amazing Esplanade range, including Meadow, Vista and Sentry Lodges. Consensus among those who’ve spent time at all four Esplanade Range Huts though is that Sunrise is the best: best terrain, best for storm skiing, and best snowpack of the bunch! ...Trip Details
SOLD OUT for 2019, book for 2020 now!
The most exotic guided ski touring trip possible: backcountry ski touring and sailing along the west coast of Spitsbergen in the Greenland sea, a thousand kilometers north of Norway, in the Svalbard archipelago of over 60 (mostly unpopulated) islands. It is a wild and remote place, and at a latitude of greater than 78º, high in the Arctic, it is level with Canada's Ellesmere Island, or the northernmost end of Greenland. Yet it easy to access -- with three-times daily flights from Oslo -- and offers the supreme comfort of a luxury sailing yacht ...Trip Details
All 8 spots available, book your group now!
We are the Wapta Deluxe experts. For years we have offered the very finest Bow Yoho traverses. Our clients have confirmed that this is the closest you'll get to a luxury Euro-style traverse in Canada and certainly on the Wapta. Find out why! Book now! ...Trip Details
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Our first Ski & Sail this season was on the s/v Rembrandt van Rijn. It’s a fine boat, about 50 m long with space for 33 passengers and 10 crew. We shared the charter with another group of snowshoers. This made for slightly more complicated logistics, but with two zodiacs and the competent direction of the expedition leader Phil Wickens everything went very smoothly.
I guided this trip with my colleage Larry Stanier. Larry and I have known each other for many years, and worked together on the Mountain Conditions Report Committe from its earliest days and humblest beginnings. Yet this is the very first time Larry and I have ever guided together. I really enjoyed working with him. Everything went smoothly despite the fact we exchanged just a small handful of emails about this logistically complicated trip, and despite the fact that Larry had never been to Svalbard before. Larry rolls with the curve balls of these international trips with ease, and no surprise: this season alone he was also ski guiding in Japan (twice) as well as Greenland and Iceland!
During the land based pre-sail touring days in Longyearbyen we had the pleasure of meeting up ...
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What’s dinner at the Gruvelageret like? Well, probably worth the visit to Svalbard all on its own!
We drove up a narrow winding snow-covered road to find an old wooden shack – the Gruvelageret, or “Mine Storage” – perched on the mountainside below menacing avalanche paths. It looked closed. No tracks in the snow outside the building, dark inside, front door locked. It was about 10 minutes past 6 pm, and they “open” at 6 pm. We knocked on the door, no answer. Then Sally saw a movement inside… we tried the other door and heard a voice in Norwegian calling out. I opened the door to the kitchen and saw one of the cooks busy with his hands in a big bowl; he confirmed that the restaurant was open and urged us to try the front door again. We were greeted by the troubled-looking hostess who asked if we’d called for a reservation (we had tried to call earlier but the message was in Norwegian). After a bit of negotiation she went to check with the cooks and confirmed that if we were OK with waiting 90 minutes they would prepare our fixed menu meal. No problem — the dining ...
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