Hermit Meadows'ish

We met up with our good friend Ross on Friday night at the Rogers Pass hotel. We know Ross from our days in Montreal. Since then he's moved to Edmonton and started his own business called Springboard. We hadn't seen him in...well, far too long. It was great to catch up. We'll be seeing him again in April on the trip to Icefall Lodge and then again in June when he passes through on his way to Oliver for a half-ironman. When it rains it pours.

So where to ski this weekend? It's a rare day when you have to hunt around for good snow in Rogers Pass. But after receiving two meters of snow during the first two weeks of February there has been almost no snow since. This combined with a temperature inversion and bright sunny days has formed a crust on any aspect that saw the sun.

Our cunning plan was to do the Tupper Glacier traverse. Mount Tupper has a long east-west ridge and we thought the crust wouldn't have formed on the north side of the ridge.

The forecast wasn't great and as we climbed up through Hermit Meadows the clouds got lower and lower until soon we couldn't see a thing. By one o'clock or so we were positioned just below the Tupper Ridge and it was really clagged in. There was however an occasional sucker hole so we decided to hunker down to wait and see. If the light improved we'd commit to going up, over, and down the other side. If not...right back the way we came.

To make a long story short we headed back down. Rats. The clouds did lift as we skied down but it would have been too late if we'd waited an longer. Next time.

Brenda taking advantage of a break in the clouds


Ross


Mount MacDonald. Lots of north facing stuff here!