Asulkan to Lily by Dome Col

Sunny skies and good stability. What to do? First option; go somewhere that we've been before but that we know will be an excellent trip. Something like the Tupper Traverse for example. Second option; do something a little different and risk having a mediocre trip on a day with possibly the best conditions of the season.

Let's hear it for novelty!

We left Fred's car at Loop Brook and made our way up the Asulkan with designs on the Dome Col.



This route is basically a variation on the Sapphire Col traverse which we had done a couple of times previously, but rather than skiing south from the upper part of the Cleaver to Sapphire Col we would instead climb up on top of the Cleaver, ascend to the Dome-Rampart Col, and then (hopefully) drop down onto the Lily glacier.

Nice day. Spring-like, but not too hot, with great views over the Asulkan Glacier.



We were at the col by 2:00ish and had our first tentative look over the other side.



No worries, that'll go. A little rocky but nothing a little p-tex couldn't fix.



We scratched our way down from the col and over a little wind scoop to have a look at the Lily far down below us.



We were a little tentative on the way down from here; the terrain was constantly rolling off making it difficult to see what exactly we we're getting into. But we sussed it out and enjoyed several long runs until finally dropping down onto the glacier. I like this photo of Fred, even though he's barely visible, with Swanzy and the upper Lily in the background.



Huge country up here.



Plenty of places left to explore when novelty next wins the day.

Fortitude

A couple of years ago we went up Flat Creek on a day with good stability and skied the right slide path in this photo from about two thirds of the way up.



Directly across on the other side of the valley that day we saw this line on Mt. Fortitude.



It's been in the back of our mind as a potential destination ever since. This weekend with the stable conditions we went in to have a look with Nick, Neil, and Gerald.

This is the upper part of the route as seen from the Bostock parking lot.



The first order of business was to negotiate the trestle bridge.



Under, not over. You must follow ze rules! It's a beautiful climb up the northeast ridge of Fortitude through old growth forest that somehow survived the age of railway building in the pass.



Once on the ridge there are great views north to the avalanche paths which run across the highway.



And onto the snow sheds which protect the highway (scene of that whopper size 4.5 which came down in January).

(Photo: Nick)

At our high point we basked in the warm sun and enjoyed a unique perspective on the peaks in the area.



The first half of the descent was obvious. We pointed the skis downhill and enjoyed the effortless turns.



There were a couple of points on the lower third where we needed to scope things out to avoid some cliffs but this just added to the sense of adventure. If you come this way yourself, basically stay left to avoid any difficulties, and there are many variations. A great day out.

Little Sifton Traverse

Brenda lead a group from the Alpine Club to Little Sifton this weekend, which is one of the reasons we did this route just a few weeks ago.

We've participated in lots of ACC trips over the years and many of the folks we've met through the club have become our closest friends,so occasionally we try to repay the favour by leading a trip ourselves to a location that we're familiar with.

Leading trips is a funny business. As "leader" you inform people about the difficulty and the length of the day, about how you would like things to proceed, where to regroup, where the areas of concern are, and so on. You also try to learn about those coming on the trip; skill level appropriate for the day, physical fitness, etc. But despite these efforts, and maybe as a result of being amateur trip leaders, we can never quite be sure how the day will play out. Sometimes people drastically overrate their own abilities and they end up suffering all day, or they travel so slowly that they couldn't possibly reach the day's objective before nightfall. Conversely we sometimes get highly experienced people with very strong personalities who basically have come on the trip with their own agenda.

On Saturday it was the first scenario. In fact there were warning signs right at the trailhead, but we had to let things play out. Two hours into the trip it was clear that we would need to break the group up. Brenda formed a sub-group at a place where there were plenty of descent options available. It actually worked out really well. They made a detour to Puff Daddy, found the route without any shenanigans for a change, skied untracked powder back down to the road, and pronounced themselves to have had a fine day.

I continued with the rest of the group up and over Sifton under amazing blue skies and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.









South face of Sifton anyone?

Asulkan Cabin

But, skier, thou art no thy lane
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promised joy.

Closed highways wreaked havoc with the arrangements. 80cm of high density snow in 24 hours severely limited the skiing.

Worth the trip? When the outhouse looks like this?



Yeah. Life is short. It's always worth getting out. Even when it gets a little weird.

Asulkan Hut February 11/12/13 2011 from Andrew Parker on Vimeo.

Teddy Bear Trees

The plan was to explore the Christiana Ridge area across from Bostock but the van wouldn't start at the Visitors Center on Sunday morning. Bollocks! Non of us being mechanics we quickly exhausted our list of amateur obvious solutions. It seemed like a starter or solenoid type problem; the battery was fine but at each turn of the key the only noise heard was a single disappointing 'click' from under the hood.

Nick suggested we try to bump start it. Now I consider myself a bit of a bump start aficionado, a true connoisseur of the art, but this looked pretty dubious. The van weighs well over 2 tonnes, the parking lot was almost level and covered in compact snow, and there was hardly any space to get a good run at it. The only thing worse than a dead VW van in the middle of nowhere is a dead VW van in the middle of nowhere in a really inconvenient place. But Nick was confident so he and and Brenda (all 100lbs of her) got behind and gave it everything they had.

The van hesitated for a moment, then began to slowly, ponderously, painfully roll across the lot. After 20 meters we were moving at no more than a leisurely walking pace with no signs of an imminent increase in speed. From my place in the driver's seat I watched the snowbank at the opposide end of the lot get bigger and bigger through the windshield. I jumped out and added my own weight for 10 steps or so and then quickly hopped back in again as we ran out space. It looked hopeless. I got 'er in 2nd, popped the clutch and....

Vrooom!

No bother at all. I was amazed.

Confident in our ability to do it all again we lined the van up for a repeat performance at the end of the day and went for a couple of runs in Teddy Bear Trees.



That's the best photo I can come up with, taken from across the valley on Grizzly Shoulder. We'd been up there a couple of times before but always in poor light and we'd stayed completely in the trees. This time we were able to climb further along the ridge and drop in on the cleaner lines that begin higher up.



We had a couple of really good long runs that left the tele skiers in our group gasping for air. No photos of the skiing; it's one of those runs that doesn't really have a safe place to stop on the way down. Teddy Bear Trees must have one of the best effort-to-reward ratios in the pass.

We bump started the van again and got her home without incident, which is when I realized that Kelowna is actually a really, really flat place.

Ursus Trees and Little Sifton Traverse

The season to date in a single image. Very little snow in November and December followed by near continuous snowfall through much of January that pushed the avalanche hazard into the extreme zone. Things settled down last week and we were lured back to Rogers Pass.

We met Ross, Marni, and Deanna on Saturday morning. Most permit areas were closed (again) so we headed up behind the hotel to Ursus Trees and found some of the best skiing of the season. Marni and Deanna are long time Canmore residents and kept running into people they knew; especially Marni who has history of climbing and skiing that spans decades. Brenda and I recognized Heather from our Selkirk Lodge trip several years ago and had a good laugh over The Great Sandwich Bag Incident. Crikey we learned some colorful language that day courtesy of the hideous Grania.

Sunday dawned clear and cold. We again skied behind the hotel and ground our way up Grizzly Shoulder towards the Little Sifton Col.



No matter how many times we come this way it always takes our breath away to pop out onto Grizzly Ridge after toiling in the trees and take in the magnificent 360 degree views.

Grizzly


Tupper


Rogers, Swiss Peaks, Hermit


At the col we decided to climb the extra hundred meters or so to the top of Little Sifton. Oh man this sucked! The tiny bit of extra elevation put us right into the teeth of the wind (just listen to it in the video) and we were frozen to the core in moments. Both Nick and Ross got minor frostbite patches on their faces. Sorry guys, bad idea. We skied off the summit as quickly as possible with our skins tied into knots from the howling wind and quickly dropped behind the col into the Hermit side.



This took us out of the wind and into the late afternoon sun which made all the difference. Thankful to be warm again we whooped our way down through the fluffy snow.

Needle Peak

This past weekend we had two reasons to go west to the Coquihalla rather than east to Rogers Pass. The first was that the avalanche conditions were still kinda wonky in Glacier Park. Most permit areas would probably be closed anyway. The second was that our friend Dave had moved from Montreal to Vancouver making Needle Peak a good in-between meeting place.

Brenda and I usually make one trip a year to the Coquihalla area. It's a nice change and an easy day trip but we usually come away feeling a bit underwhelmed. The terrain seems limited. However I must admit that we haven't really explored much and perhaps it's our own imagination that limits us.



We had a few turns, got some sun on our faces, and chatted endlessly with Dave.

McGill Shoulder (Bostock)

Avalanche hazard peaked over the weekend. We headed for the trees at McGill Shoulder, although calling it "tree skiing" would be a bit of a misnomer. The main features here are the two main avalanche paths which drop down from the summit and several smaller paths on either side. We spent the day skirting along the edge of these paths, staying in the mature trees where we could. Good skiing. Things are finally beginning to fill in.

Stanley Mitchell Hut

Update November 2017:
The photos in this post were hosted on Google's Picasa Web Albums. Google shuttered the service and these photos no longer click through to larger versions. Sorry about that. Here's a link to the album on Google Photos if you are interested: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Au6P9N7sB1zCflAi1

The appeal of the Stanley Mitchell hut was just to be there; a place we'd never been to before, a remote and quiet location to welcome in the New Year. But the real story of this trip was about simply getting there rather than being there.



The hut is 24km from the highway. The first 13km follows an unplowed road to a picnic shelter at Takakkaw Falls. Many parties break up the trip by overnighting at the shelter and then continuing on the next day. It's only a 700m elevation gain from highway to hut but nevertheless 24km is a long way to go in midwinter with a three day pack on one's back. Another concern was the temperature which was forecast to be somewhere in the mid minus 20s.

We couldn't coax any of our regular ski buddies to join us on this trip. Wusses! Nevertheless Brenda and I felt that getting to the hut in one day was within our powers...but only just.

The alarm went off in our hotel room in Golden at 3:30am mountain time. That, dear friends, is a brutal 2:30am Kelowna time. My severe distaste of alpine starts outweighs an even greater distaste of searching for unfamiliar huts in the dark at -20C at the end of a long day. At 5:00am we were skiing away from the car.



The blowing snow flashed through the light of our headlamps and our breath froze instantly onto our faces and clothes. It was absolutely freezing. Maybe we've grown soft living in the Okanagan for a few years, but this seemed seriously, intensely cold.



We plodded along in the darkness without speaking much, the only sound being the scritch-scritch-scritch of pole tips in the packed snow. We had our skins on at this point. In retrospect it would have been much better to use kick wax but at the time we couldn't see far enough into the darkness to know if the road stayed flat ahead of us. Although I don't think we could have stopped anyway, it was far too cold to start futzing with wax.

After a couple of hours a silvery moon rose over Mount Stephen to the south and gave a bit of light to see by, and soon the sun began to inch it's way over the peaks and into the valley. It raised our spirits a bit but didn't provide much in the way of warmth. We paused briefly to take off skins and jam them quickly inside our coats. The snow was cold enough that we didn't need wax but even this brief stop left me with frozen fingers and a creeping feeling of desperation; I was getting colder and colder and nothing seemed to help. I think part of the problem was that we weren't climbing upwards and the slow shuffling along the level road wasn't allowing me to generate any heat.

By 9 o'clock I was beginning to have serious doubts about making it to the hut that night when we finally saw the first road signs indicating that we were close to the picnic shelter. Our pace quickened and soon the shelter was in sight. Was that a wisp of smoke coming out of the chimney?



Yes it was! We kicked off the skis and waddled stiffly into the shelter. Warmth! Don't get me wrong it was still well below freezing but it was infinitely warmer than outside. Someone had spent the night and the stove was still warm. In a rather rash maneuver I threw off my pack, grabbed the fuel bottle, tossed a few small logs into the stove and doused the whole lot in fuel. Whoosh! Instant heat. Heaven.



We spent over an hour huddled next to the stove, warming up and melting snow for hot drinks. As warmth slowly returned to fingers and toes so did our confidence in getting to the Stanley Mitchell. When a group of three arrived at the shelter on their way out from the hut, thus ensuring that there was a track all the way in, we knew we could get there ourselves. It took another five cold hours (we aren't the fastest thing on four legs) but we did get there with reasonable time to spare.



We had the fire roaring away and it was just beginning to get dark when three ice-encrusted apparitions appeared outside the hut. Jon, Jamie, and Tim (whose names we learned later) had made much better time than we did despite the 8 liters of wine and 1.5 liters of booze they packed in! They took pity on our paltry hip flask of Scotch and shared generously. We really enjoyed our three nights with them.

Cold, however, was the constant theme. The hut never really warmed up despite the blazing fire that was burning the entire time. The stainless steel kitchen counter was a particular challenge; anything slightly moist that came into contact would freeze instantly to the counter top. Food scraps, tea, pot drips, and damp cutlery added daily to the morass. The only really warm spot in the entire hut was right in front of the stove door where we all spent a considerable amount of time. Afterwards we learned that the temperature at valley bottom had dipped down to -33C during our stay. Being 700m higher I'd be willing to bet that it was considerably colder at the hut.



We explored the area but didn't stray too far afield. In exposed areas the wind had been howling resulting in a classic shallow Rockies snowpack of styrofoam over sugar. Down lower in the trees there was better snow and we had some fun with Jon and Tim skiing the gentle slopes south of the cabin. I didn't remove a single layer of clothing the entire time.





New Years Eve was celebrated in fine style as Brenda and I did our Good Christian Duty by helping the others work through their stash of booze. We slept in very late the next morning.



The trip out was still cold and the slog along the road was still tedious but it only took just over 5 hours to get to the car.



Somewhere near the end I asked Brenda which modern convenience she was thinking about most. Her reply of "Car batteries" put a bit of worry into the final few kilometers. Thankfully when we got to the car the engine did spark to life but it was touch and go for a moment.

Often the measure of success for a trip like this is whether or not you'd do it all again, and sometimes a day or two of reflection is required before deciding one way or the other. In this case we had already decided on the way out that this was a trip we'd do again.

A couple of things worth noting, for ourselves as much as for anyone reading this blog who is considering making the trip. As mentioned we aren't particularly fast but we did manage to get to the hut in one push and on one of the shortest days of the year. However we didn't have to break any trail. That could easily have added a couple of hours to the journey. Another point which struck us was how challenging it would be to follow the final six or seven kilometers of trail after a snowfall, especially if one wasn't familiar with the route. A GPS would be a massive help. Finally, for those considering an overnight stay at the picnic shelter, I don't think it would be as dire as some sources have made it out to be. It didn't appear to be overrun with pack rats and there was a small supply of wood available inside the shelter -- but I can't say if there was more available nearby. Even the outhouse was operational. Nevertheless we would still go from car to hut in one day.

Happy new year.

8812 and Video Peak

Falling behind on the blog! Here's a quick recap of a trip to Rogers Pass a few weeks ago.

On Saturday we joined an ACC group for a trip up to 8812 bowl. It was clear and cold with lots of other skiers up in the Connaught drainage; we certainly weren't going to get first tracks. This is Gerald contemplating a scratchy drop from Bruins Ridge into 8812.



We took a line more to skiers right than usual, found some good snow, and enjoyed the long mellow decent.



Not without incident of course; I found some crust and provided a crowd pleasing face plant for the peanut gallery above us on the ridge. Thankfully not on film.



The highlight of the weekend was running into Val and James. I know James from a trip to the Bugs several years ago. And Val from...I have no idea, through Brian somehow. It was Val's 50th and she was celebrating in style with friends from all over.



On Sunday a diminished group headed back up the valley again. Here's Val enjoying her first day of life at 50.



The day before we had a good view of this line on Video Peak shining in the sun and couldn't resist.



The day had begun clear and sunny but by the time we scrambled to the top of Video the clouds had come in and the visibility wasn't great.



We skied down the front face on Video instead of the one we had originally been interested in. It's a good ski right off the summit but...meh...after the tromp up the valley and the roly-poly decent back down it seems like a long way to go for a few hundred meters of good steep skiing.

Aren't we getting spoiled?