Here and there...Rogers Pass, Big White

The season kind of ended with a whimper rather than a bang for us this year. It kept snowing but things warmed up in a hurry and all that new snow turned to mush rather than corn. We did a few trips to Rogers Pass but never seemed to get the timing right. This trip up the Asulkan to the base of the Youngs Headwall was pretty typical...heavy work up followed by heavy skiing down in gloppy heartbreaking snow.



As always though it was just good to be out.



Eventually we gave up on The Pass and made trips closer to home like this one with Kieran to Big White.





A fun day out but the end was definitely near!

Sapphire Col

Sapphire Col Hut in winter? Yeah it was about as warm as it looks.



But what a setting and it didn't take long to warm up with a hot soup inside us and four people inside the hut.





The plan for the next day was to continue across the Lily Glacier and go around (or over) Swanzy to explore new terrain on the south side of Bonney. The hitch in this plan was that we had just spent several hours breaking a steep trail through fantastic untracked powder, a definite novelty this time of year, and we were reluctant to pass up all of the good skiing. As we buried deep into our sleeping bags to ward of the cold we still weren't sure in which direction we would head the next day.

The morning started off with Steve attempting to burn down the hut and my stove lying in a smouldering hole in the snow outside the door. On the upside it did warm things up several degrees. We had our first good view of the route over to Bonney. It looked like a lot of work.



Sometimes the novelty of exploring new terrain wins the day. Other days you just gotta go for the guaranteed good skiing. Or maybe we're just getting old. Either way it was brilliant and we went back for more.





A slight tinge of regret as I write this up several weeks later but there's always next year. Here are a bunch of good photos from the trip.