Loop Brook / Bonney Trees

Brenda and I explored Loop Brook late last season but we didn't travel very far up the drainage. It was good to visit here again and have a better look around with Steve, Cat, and Fred.

You can see where we were today in relation to last week's traverse...

There are a couple of interesting geological features up here. On the south ridge of Ross Peak which is the left sky line in this photo....

...is a natural arch near the summit where you can see right through from one side to the other. The other feature is a slot canyon that joins Loop Brook part way up the drainage. The canyon is so steep sided and narrow that it looks like the earth was simply wrenched apart for several hundred meters.

We came across this groovy barber pole tree which was twisted along it's entire height.

We schlogged along the drainage and up through trees to about 2000m where we got above tree line and found some nice mellow slopes and made 3 or 4 runs. We were just below the Bonney Glacier which is quite expansive and covers most of the north facing slopes of Bonney. The visibility wasn't all that great but we could see just enough blue ice looming out of the mist to know that there was something big above us.

There's a skier named Greg Hill out of Revelstoke who is blogging his attempt to ski 100 days of 10,000' this winter. To put this in some perspective 5000' is a pretty big day for Brenda and I. We've been checking out his blog lately because it's a fabulous source of information for skiing in the area.

As we were doing our runs today another group appeared. They had climbed most of the way up the final slope when one guy dropped his pack and straight lined it right back down again. He then promptly turned around and climbed back up past us at a tremendous clip. "Getting a lot in today?" asked Fred. "Yup. Gotta." came the reply. He picked up his pack and quickly caught up with his buddies as they disappeared over the next ridge where we later saw another set of tracks straight lining right down the slope.

Sure enough we checked Greg Hill's blog the next day and he had been up Loop Brook. In fact he had already skied from the summit of Mount Afton by the time we saw him. Mental.

I'm sure we could have done 10,000' today today too (ahem) but we spent too much time trying to send enormous snow bombs crashing down from the tree tops.




On another note I'm finding it challenging to keep this blog up to date. The date of the posts is drifting so far from the date of the trips that it's difficult to tell what trip we did when. For example I'm writing this on a Thursday and we did the trip on Sunday. I think from now on I'll modify the date of the post to match the date of the trip regardless of when the actual post is made.