Tupper Traverse

The only other time we have skied the Tupper Traverse was exactly five years ago to the day. Weird. Since then there have been significant changes made to the Winter Permit System particularly in regards to avoiding the CP Rail tracks. Five years ago it was accepted if not entirely legal to cross the tracks at the end of the day. Today the exit involves a big loop along the old rail grade until the rail tracks disappear into the Connaught Tunnel at which point skiers can cross and double back to the Stone Arch parking area along an access road and trail.



The new route is a bit of an ordeal at the end of the day and forces you to cross some fairly major avalanche paths. I understand that CP Rail needs to mitigate liability issues but it still irks me that a huge and profitable company can effectively dictate where people can and cannot go within a national park.

Despite these terrible first world problems that we must endure (?) we had a very fine day indeed. Up through Hermit Meadows easily enough and onto the west ridge of Tupper under beautiful weather.





The temperature changed dramatically on the other side of the ridge. We went from baking hot to frozen fingers with just a couple of minutes. This is the first little run down on to the Tupper Glacier.



From here we made our way over to the top of the big 40 degree drop behind Tupper expecting great things.



Sadly the snow was completely wind hammered and the run we'd come all this way for (centre left in this photo) was a bit of a damp squib.



The first world problems were like totally piling up at this point. Nevertheless we continued on under these trying conditions.



Arriving at treeline there were a couple of options. Last time we booted up the steep slope on skiers right to get an early entrance into the Connaught slide path on the other side. This time we continued down to the "sink hole" described in the guide book and contoured around through thick trees until popping out at a lower point on the slide path. The long, long, long descent down the east facing slide path gave us the expected combination of truly excellent and truly awful snow conditions.



The trek along the old rail grade gave us the chance to see the historic stone arch bridge over Cascade Creek which dates back to the late 1800s.



The final leg along the access road is much less inspiring.



This time it took us 8 hours with 1600m of climbing including much faffing about scrambling over avalanche debris on the old rail grade. An adventure with a bit of history.