Tupper Traverse

After three previous attempts we finally got up and over the west ridge of Mount Tupper. This time we started early, had plenty of daylight available (hooray for daylight savings time), found the best route through Hermit Meadows, and then got lucky with the weather too.

Fred, Steve, and Junko met us at the visitor center at 7:00. We got our permits, dropped off a car 8K down the road at Stone Arch, and were tromping up towards Hermit Meadows by 8:00.

On our previous trips we had always been too far to climber's left and lost time and elevation traversing back right over the rolling terrain to get below the big slope leading up towards Tupper. This time we forced ourselves to stay to the right at all costs and it worked out well. It helped that we could actually see for a change too!

This is Steve below the Swiss Peaks Mount Rogers. Up and right leads to the west ridge of Tupper.



With a haughty cheer (not really) we crossed over the west ridge at around 12:30 and started down the other side of Tupper. Our first reward for perseverance was this great little slope. It was so nice that when Brenda reached the bottom she claimed that here smile muscles were sore



We traversed across some flats until right up against Tupper. From this point there is a long and very steep gully that leads down to two lakes. In this first photo we're heading towards the top of the gully. The second photo was taken later in the day and is looking back up at the gully which is just left of center.





Helluva run. One where you need to ski the whole thing in one fell swoop and then get the heck out of the way. We were all happy but knackered at end of it. From here with a mixture of contouring and then dropping down the fall line we eventually arrived back at tree line.

At this point there were two options available. The first is to continue descending down the same side of the ridge and to then contour around the end of the ridge and bushwack out to the highway. The second option is to ascend to the top of the ridge and to then cut across to the Connaught slide path which leads down to the railway and eventually to the car.

After checking the map and altimeter to make sure that we were in the right place we decided on the second option and started climbing up the ridge.



Oh man it took ages. The snow was riddled with depth hoar which sometimes made it seem more like swimming than climbing. Anyway we struggled to the top and back into the sunshine.

Steve points out roughly where the car is. Still a long way down.



We cut across to the slide path and spent a good long while assessing it's stability. Eventually we decided that all was well and, one at a time, down we went...

And down. And down. And then down some more. It was a long run. The snow, which began as really nice dense powder, first became slightly crusty, then diabolically crusty, and then at some point changed to full on wet spring-like snow. It was hard work.

After what seemed a really long time we hit the CPR rail line which was our guide back to the highway. In the second photo you can just make out the entrance to the famous tunnel which goes through Mount MacDonald. When talking with Luc at the visitor center he'd said "if it gets dark you'll know that you've hiked too far along the tracks".

Edit March 2013:
This post is getting a few views lately. Where do you people come from? Anyway I should note that our route along and across the rail tracks back in 2008 was acceptable (sort of) at the time but is strictly forbidden now. Here is a more recent post on the Tupper Traverse and proper exit instructions on the Parks Canada web site.





1550 meters of climbing and 9 hours car to car. Not too bad for a bunch of weekend warriors.

More photies here Update 2017: Google killed Picasa. Thanks Google. New link: https://goo.gl/photos/9i3VDzRTXJY4XamRA

8812 Bowl

Steve joined us on Sunday morning and we once again skied up into the Ursus Minor area. After much hemming and hawing we veered away from our previous day's route, which had taken us into the Ursus Minor bowl, and instead headed left and up onto Bruins Ridge.

It was a stellar day with mostly blue skies but the wind was howling across the ridge. The 8812 Bowl is just before Bruins Pass and is accessed from the col in this photo. You can just make out some old tracks.





It was a terrific run that went went on and on until we were forced to stop and give our aching legs a rest. The bowl doesn't look overly steep in this photo but as you make those first few turns from the top it's enough to make that little voice in your head say "gee I hope this all holds together".





A great day in the mountains. Brenda and I were each sporting a good sunburn on Monday morning. More photos here and maybe some video later. And happy birthday to my Dad and my brother Ian.

Oh and edited to add that we ran into Diana and Al, who we know from Ottawa, and their friends Carole and Ray. In the pub they regaled us with epic tales of some of the long ski traverses they've done over the years. Good luck on the Churchill traverse you guys.

Video Peak

We finally went skiing this weekend after spending the last two weekends at home. A good thing too otherwise I may have started another "little" reno project. (How can one small bathroom consume so much time and money?)

We weren't sure what the weather would do so we toured up into Ursus Minor Bowl where there are some options available depending on the visibility. From a distance we spotted an up track on Video Peak and headed in that direction. The light changed from clear to murky and back again and we weren't sure which way it would go. We were lucky and found ourselves at the top of the peak and ready to ski down just as some blue sky appeared.

Wow what a great run. It was that type of dense powder snow that makes skiing absolutely effortless as you simply bounce from one turn into the next with a ridiculous grin on your face!

Video Peak


Ursus Minor Bowl


Just below the summit of Video Peak


Brenda dropping in


Our tracks seen from Hospital Bowl

Perley Rock part deux

A nice day on Sunday and we opted for Perley Rock. Most of the terrain here is north or north-west facing. We hoped this would help us to avoid the nasty crust. It worked for the most part but it was amazing how even a tiny change in aspect would make a huge difference. You could be knee deep in lovely powder on one turn and then fighting for your life in death crust on the next.

Occasionally, just occasionally, I question the wisdom of telemark skiing. Tight trees in breakable crust is one of those occasions...stuff'll make Donald Rumsfeld cry.

We traveled as far as the last slope just below Perley Rock proper where we kicked off a small slide and called it a day.



The most open and direct run down was crusty and so we were forced to ski a line to skiers left from what would have been optimal. Still it was all good fun and we each took a turn entertaining the others with good skiing punctuated by spectacular face plants.

I don't think I'd venture up this way with any less stability than what we had today. From a distance the trees tend to suggest a somewhat safer route but in reality there are broken off stumps and every tree has had it's uphill branches ripped of.

Sir Donald (r) and Uto (l). We've climbed Uto. Sir Donald awaits


Ross near our high point

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!

Asulkan Cabin

The plan for the weekend was to spend Friday night at the Asulkan parking lot and to get an early start on Saturday morning perhaps meeting the crew somewhere around the Asulkan Cabin. However the road conditions were diabolical east of Sicamous. There was heavy snow falling and visibility was near zero. It was a white knuckle drive as far as Revelstoke where we decided enough was enough.

Turned out that we weren't the only ones. The pull-off just outside of town was packed with rigs. We threaded our way into a quiet corner and settled in for the night as the snow continued to pile up. I love having a vehicle that we can sleep in.

A pre-dawn start on Saturday had us at the parking lot by first light.



There were already a few early risers departing from the Wheeler hut. We helped them to extricate their cars from the lot (one guy twice) had a quick breakfast and hit the trail by 7:30.

There was some trail breaking but it wasn't too bad. We ran into our group on the steep slope just below the hut. After lightening our packs of some of the overnight gear we joined them for a short run and then continued on up. A quick lunch and there was still just enough time for a quick jaunt above the hut before it got dark. The days are certainly getting longer now.



The strange thing about the Asulkan Cabin this weekend was that there was almost no wind. Virtualy unprecedented. Check the video in this post from November to see what it's normally like up here. A visit to the outhouse was practically a pleasure (if you could overlook the threat from the barrel "stalagmite").

We woke to a beautiful sunny day on Sunday and enjoyed some of the best skiing we've had this season. On this trip we met Dave and Henry and we look forward to skiing with them again some time soon.







Video below and more photos here.

McGill Shoulder

Great day at McGill Shoulder on Sunday. Good visibility, not too cold, and 10-15cm of new snow had fallen overnight. Brilliant.

There's so much terrain at McGill. We often get slightly turned around only to end up stumbling across some great new run that we've never been to before.

An uneventful day for the most part. Just great skiing. Until we were almost back at the car that is...

The trail out is a real bobsled run. At the end you rocket out of the trees and up onto the snowbank beside the highway and then follow it back to the car. We had both just shot up onto the snowbank when some sixth sense made me look back over my shoulder.

To my horror all I saw was a giant brown wave of snow and muck hurtling down the highway towards us. I threw myself off the snowbank into the trees and simultaneously screamed "PLOWWWWWWWWW!!" at Brenda. Without hesitating for an instant she repeated my performance and landed in a heap just as the tsunami of muck and gravel washed across the snowbank.

Good times.

This was the second plow related incident in a few weeks and both occurred within 100m of each other. Weird.

Three Valley Gap

Everyone likes to explore a bit and find some new places to ski. Fred is more committed than most to this sort of endeavor. He's developing quite a reputation for himself. Although this as much for his successes as it is for his...er, failures. I had already been on one adventure (read: epic) with Fred a couple of years ago and just last weekend on another "adventure" he ended up hanging upside down from a barbed wire fence somewhere outside of Salmon Arm. In the dark. After a 12 hour day. I'm not kidding.

Prepared for an epic we drove a short distance up the Wap FSR in Three Valley Gap on the west side of Revelstoke. It was crawling with sledders. We were reluctant to start skiing up the logging road while sleds screamed all around us but it was the only practical route. But it worked out in the end because by the time we started skiing they had all sped off. We didn't see any more sleds for the rest of the day.

Our goal was a ridge that had series of clearings facing the highway. To make a long story short we didn't make it up all the way. As we neared the ridge top it became cold, misty, and windy and the snow was crusty as heck. More evidence of the high winds of last week.

But it was a fun ski back down to the car. No epic. No barbed wire. Nuthin'. We'll probably come back again some time. Nice work Fred.

Malakwa

A sunny day! Not a cloud from horizon to horizon. A rare event this winter. The downside was that it was really cold and really windy.

Malakwa is still open for now. It's anyones guess as to how long this situation will last for. We intended to drive to the usual parking spot at 15 but were forced to stop a couple of kilometers short of our destination. There had been very high winds overnight and a combination of drifting snow and a small slide had covered a 50 meter section of the road. It was really tempting to try to push through with the tire chains on. However, there were bigger vehicles than ours already parked below the blockage. We weren't going to be the first to try it.

We skied from where we were and didn't mind the extra few kilometers. We didn't venture too far from the road. Due to the strong winds the snow conditions varied from bullet proof slab to nice fluffy powder all depending on the aspect.

Despite it being a nice sunny day I didn't take a single photo. Too cold.

Flat Creek and Perley Rock

On Saturday morning we woke up at the Bostock pull-off planning to ski at McGill Shoulder. We chatted with another group who were heading into Flat Creek. We'd never been there before and since there would be a track to follow we decided to go there instead.

After crossing the road we were forced to sprint along the snowbank to avoid getting buried by an oncoming plow. We crossed the CP Rail tracks and the Illecillewaet River and then plodded up the drainage on a meandering and yes very flat track.



Edit Feb 2014:
I should note that our route along and across the rail tracks back in 2008 was acceptable at the time (sort of) but is strictly forbidden now. There is a designated access route that avoids crossing the tracks. It's kind of a Big Deal with Parks so please check the Parks website for details.

Eventually the trees thinned out and we were able to get our bearings. There's a south and a north aspect in the drainage. We followed the track up the north side and ended up on an enormous wide-open but gentle slope that presented several options. We climbed from one island of trees to another trying to minimize our exposure and aimed for a ridge line that looked like it would give us a view over into the next drainage.



We ran out of steam just below our destination at 2200 meters near the 'X' in this photo.



It was 1000 meters of fun skiing from the 'X' to where we're standing. Thinking about it, it was 5 hours of climbing for a half-hour descent. Sheesh, never do the math.

Afterwards we enjoyed a nice cold beer at the hotel lounge (5 deer, 3 bears, 1 raccoon, 1 eagle, 1 goose, 2 ducks -- see previous post) and 1 arse-hole avy instructor (details upon request).

On Sunday we skied up towards Perly Rock but never really got the visibility we needed to get there. Still we enjoyed a short but excellent run down and learned a lot for the next time we come up this way.



We also saw Petula the Ptarmigan. We saw her at the Asulkan hut last year and she makes a cameo at the end of this short video. She's the...um, white thing. With a beak. Ptarmigans don't film well in the winter.

Christmas 2007

Between Christmas and New Years we spent four days at Rogers Pass. We skied at Cheops Glades, Hermit Meadows, Ursus Minor, and NRC gully. Fred joined us at Cheops and Hermit and Steve joined us at Hermit.

We slept in the van each night and this was almost as much fun as the skiing itself. Each day we'd finish skiing around 4:00 which left us with several cold, dark hours with which to entertain ourselves. There's not much in the way of amenities at the pass. First we'd drop in at the visitor centre.



The centre is a fantastic facility with great ambiance and it does a really good job of conveying a sense of the history of Rogers Pass. When skiing here you almost always start your day at the visitor centre to check the weather and avalanche forecasts and to obtain permits for the ski areas which are sometimes closed for avalanche control. We'd spend an hour here drying out in front of the fire before they chucked us out at five.

We'd then make the cold walk across to the the perennially weird Glacier Park Hotel. I can't describe the hotel any other way. It's just weird. We'd spend a couple of hours in the lounge surrounded by stuffed animals and stuffed leather chairs. It's like a gentleman's club from 19th century London. We'd nurse some drinks and watch the weirdness for a couple of hours before hunger would eventually force us back to the van to cook some dinner and then we'd be in bed by nine. Life was good.

Steve at Hermit Meadows


Fred in Cheops Glades


Brenda on Ursus Minor Ridge

Malakwa

After Brenda's exam on Saturday we drove to Salmon Arm in time to see the CPR Holiday Train.

The train is decorated with thousands of Christmas lights and makes stops all across the US and Canada where entertainers and musicians perform from an open-sided box car. There were two huge bonfires and bleachers set up to watch the show. Classic Canadiana. More on the train at the CPR website.

On Sunday we put the chains on to get Steve's van up the road. Actually we got up the road just fine but got bogged down in the soft snow when we parked. Chains are cool.


This is the parking area at km 15 which I often refer to.

Lots of people out today. Enormous 4x4's are de rigueur and we're usually the exception to the rule in Brenda's CRV or Steve's all-wheel drive van.

We were lucky enough to come across a rare and elusive British Columbia Snow Elephant.

They're very shy and are rarely caught on film so we were very lucky to get this shot. This is why you should carry peanuts when traveling in the backcountry.

Today we again did a bit if exploring. Rather taking off the skins and heading down at the first opportunity we instead traveled up and over the 17km summit and followed a saddle over to the next ridge to the southwest. We've often looked at this feature from 17 and from that vantage point it appears to be quite steep. It turned out to be a fairly mild slope and we enjoyed the ski down into the valley.

Thankfully there was a skin track in place and we didn't have to break trail back up to the top of 17. From there we could see the parking area and we basically just made a beeline straight down to the car. Steve and Brenda chose a more adventurous route that left them temporarily cliffed. Fred, Junko and I and couldn't see them above us but we could follow their progress by the steady stream of snow they were knocking down and by the general thrashing about and cursing until they eventually popped out of the trees.

A bit of crappy video from the day...

Malakwa

There was a big storm in the forecast for Sunday so we again opted for a day trip to The Gorge. We drove up to Salmon Arm on Saturday evening, stayed at Fred's, and had dinner at an excellent Thai restaurant right across the street. I like Salmon Arm. It's got a nice small town feel.

On Sunday we made a few runs at km 17 and did a bit of exploring. I tried to shoot some video but with the heavy snow there wasn't much light and the aging digital camera that I use just wasn't up to the task. I'd like to upgrade to a real video camera one day but then I'd need to upgrade my computer to edit the video. Then I'd want to get some decent video editing software. Then I'd need...urk. It's a slippery slope.

Here's Fred doing what he does best.



At the end of the day we came across this rascal who had just cut down a small tree to take home for Christmas.



We talked with him for a while but he was reluctant to show us his face. When we asked if he had a tree cutting permit he quickly skied off. I snapped a photo of him as he sped away. He seemed like a nice guy so I've blocked out his face so as not to reveal his identity. I think he was Norwegian...