Asulkan Valley

  Today felt like mid winter conditions, up in the alpine we encountered 70-90 cm of powder from the past 4 days. Ridiculous skiing.  Ian, Chris and myself drove up to Rogers Pass and skinned up the Asulkan valley to ski the Glacier and hopefully the thorington route on Leda.

The sun was out in the morning and everything looked amazing, every line looked filled in and  we talked about the infinite possibilities for the day. Eventually we were at the back of the valley and touring up towards Sapphire Col. As we were nearing the upper alpine catabatic winds tore at our clothing and any exposed skin. Realising that summitting Mt-Castor was not going to be a pleasurable experience we chose to ski a 3000 foot run down the Asulkan glacier.  We enjoyed deep cold turns the whole way down. The light was slightly flat so I led but it sure looked like the others were loving it. 

After such an incredible run it was easy to convince ourselves that we needed another just like it. So back up we went and we had to break trail for  most of the climb as wind had blown our old one away.

Once again we had a great run down the glacier and enjoyed slightly better light with some steeper powder turns. Here is a shot of Ian,not the best shot but he is lost somewhere in  the powder cloud.

We couldn’t get enough so we toured back up and over onto the Dome side . The wind got stronger and very gusty probably blowing up to 80 km an hour. ruining some of the amazing snow we had just enjoyed. But the Dome stayed protected and we had a fantastic run down to Valley bottom.

I wish the boys had told me they were going to tour 10 000 feet because I would not have squeezed in a lap early in the morning. 11200 feet of great skiing.