We met up on Saturday night with DS, J, and some other folks from Kelowna, at the hotel at Rogers Pass. The meeting was due partly to planning and partly to good fortune, and it was fun to set off with a small group on Sunday morning - Steve, Fred, Andrew and myself, along with the new group. We all trooped up the Hermit Meadows trail, with thoughts of an aesthetic run down the Swiss glacier.
Andrew is a much better photographer than I am, and my camera cost twenty dollars. My twenty dollar camera has one setting switch, set to either close-up (denoted by a flower) or far-away (denoted by a mountain). Before I progress to owning a more expensive camera, with more settings, I must learn to use this one setting properly. Due to all the reasons above, some of the photos may be inferior to the usual high standards to which Andrew's readers have become accustomed.
We pulled out of the trees and into fog.
A bit put out, we went for a run, and miraculously no-one fell off a cliff anywhere. It was still quite foggy, and time for a decision - do we push on to our goal of the glacier, or do we call it a day? Half the group decided to call it a day - they had had a big day yesterday. Fred, Andrew, Steve and Brenda (your guest today) chose to point our skis upwards once again for a long and blind ascent into the clouds, hoping that luck would be with us and we would get a clearing.
Up and up we went, without seeing a thing. We later realized that our uptrack fell short of direct, but it was probably the safest option considering that we couldn't see much. We stopped for lunch after an hour or two, and decided that we were done. And lo and behold, the clouds began to clear, flowing down into the valley in a whirl.
So up again for another twenty minutes, putting us just around the toe of the glacier, for a beautiful, sunny ski down.
Smiles all around for a great ski
The ski out became a bit crusty, and the last couple hundred metres above the car were crusty like a casserole that had been left in the oven for eight hours. It was a struggle to get down to the car injury free, but we made it, for a great day.
I prefer the regular host.
ReplyDeleteeither way, keep up the posting even though the conditions out east include knee deep fresh snow, it is nice to see the mountains!
ReplyDeleteCan't complain at the pics for $20!
ReplyDeleteI really like that first "out of the fog" picture. I am now interested in trekking through snow that is "crusty like a casserole that had been left in the oven for eight hours"
ReplyDeleteSteve