Youngs Peak Traverse

A slough on the railbed? Come on. We just left the car!




And a big whumper out of the Practice Slopes too.




Weasel huck?




Very wintry below the glacier.

Beautiful blue skies. Freezing cold to baking hot in about 5 minutes.




Youngs Peak at far right.




Ascent up final ridge and the initial ski down the headwall.




Brenda near the summit.




And Steve somewhere below the headwall. The only photo of actual skiing today.




A great day but also a very long day!



All zee pics are here: https://goo.gl/photos/qLj3qKAavnKkS5S67

NRC

Unsure what the weather would do we headed to NRC where there are a couple of low visibility options. In the end we saw a bit of everything...snow, wind, sun, cloud, fog, hot, cold.

The main slide paths had gone right to valley bottom. Not unheard of in spring. But the most interesting observation for us was how the shoulder gully to skier's left had also avalanched and taken out mature timber on either side of the path. It's right around here that the up track often enters into this gully to get around the cliff band in the middle section of the main avalanche paths.





Zoiks.

Anyway, we skied. And it was good. Although a little character building below 1600 meters-ish.

Triangle Moraine (again)

Lots of snow. Warming. Everything was justifiably closed again. So a short day up the Asulkan again at the Tree Triangle. Heavy trail breaking again too. We had fresh tracks for three runs and called it a day. It was getting a bit old at the end I must admit. Looking forward to some colder temperatures so we can get further afield.

Triangle Moraine

We dropped Ross's car off at Loop Brook and headed to the Asulkan parking. The plan was to go over the Dome-Rampart Col and then out via the Lily Glacier. We hoped someone had broken trail up to the Dome Glacier by now. Strange times when you find yourself hoping that someone is ahead of you! But again, weirdly, we found ourselves putting in a track up through the trees above The Mouse Trap towards The Triangle Moraine. Where was everyone?



Eventually a lone skier came up our track. He chatted for a bit and watched us make agonizingly slow progress through the deep snow. Eventually he lost patience and offered to break trail for a while. As he sped past he idly mentioned that his dog was somewhere behind. As the visibility dropped and our motivation to do the traverse went with it we stopped for a snack. Ahead of us our new trailbreaker ripped skins and headed down. A good twenty minutes later look who showed up!





He was awesome! And pretty excited to have some company it seemed. We assumed his owner would realize that they'd missed each other and would come back up to find him. He followed us around for an hour before reuniting with his owner on our first run.





We did a couple of laps on The Triangle Moraine before sneaking hard skiers left to the lower end of one of the slide paths below The Mouse Trap.









We were a little disappointed to miss the traverse. But with tired legs, great conditions, and fresh tracks all day, we weren't complaining too much.

All pics: https://goo.gl/photos/x9BhmVH4694ZpYT47

Ursus Trees

"Avalanche Control from West Boundary of Glacier National Park to East Boundary of Glacier National Park (43.8 km), 8:00 am to 7:00 pm on Sat Mar 4. Individual delays of 2 to 3 hours expected."

An extra early start got us to the Visitors Center just as the highway closed and the sounds of artillery started to echo across the mountains. So despite the big dump of snow there were only a couple of parties ahead of us as we headed up the Connaught. There were so few people about that we actually had to break trail for a good part of the day. Pretty rare these days in one of the main thoroughfares of Rogers Pass. We did a couple of laps in the trees. Had some laughs. And descended via the gully to skiers right of Hospital Gully. A great day of skiing that left us exhausted.

More pics at: https://goo.gl/photos/FGZjdtUhbm8Qpq4B8