Frenchman’s Cap
My last movie was called mountain animals, I wish i had kept that title for today’s adventures. We canoed across the lake to access Frenchman’s cap, a very dramatic summit that towers over the lake. The drainage we accessed, park creek, is a seldom visited, very primordial drainage. Huge cliffs border the creek the whole way up and massive trees fill the valley bottom.
First off we stumbled upon some old wolf tracks, then some fresh Wolverine tracks, around a corner we found a tree that a piliated wood pecker was in the process of destroying. Then we toured onto a kill, or what was left of a moose, which was exactly a lot of fur, some blood and two pelvic bones; there were lots of wolf tracks all round this area. Further on some marten tracks and then we saw that we had scared a wolverine up the valley, he ended up climbing up to a high col to the west of our high point! Then on the ridge I stumbled onto some Goat tracks that came up and out of a dramatic chute. and finally a bald eagle soared over us as we were getting ready to canoe home. Mountain animals everywhere.
The tour up was amazing, a little longer in the valley than I had hoped, but when we were standing under our run none of us had any complaints. The north facing snow looked amazing and the line looked awesome. The tour up was huge, straight up and around till we finally spotted the summit. There seemed to be no easy way up to it so we climbed as high as we could and then skied our line.
What a line it was, a large chute bordered by impressive peaks, with perfectly settled snow the whole way down.A Very remoteline that most likely has never been skied before. Awesome turns the whole way down and then a great canoe home…. A great adventure.
A couple of days on Mt-Macdonald
Yesterday we decided to try and ski the Herdman on Mt-Macdonald. Last year we ended up skiing a line on climbers left that was exciting and unknown, but we had never skied the herdman proper. The herdman is a 4000 + foot run that slams its way from the ridge down to the valley floor.SFD, straight f$#@ing down. A fine line.
We toured up Railroad ridge, the golden side of the pass, which was an easy up that gained us elevation quickly. The tour wrapped up the ridge, past a couple of massive white pines, and deposited us quickly above a 2000 foot treed chute into avalanche creek. The chute was decent but slightly crusty due to the solar aspect of the line.
Up Avalanche creek, under a glacier, where a couple of dramatic ice falls occurred and up to the top of the Herdman. From there we stared 4000 feet straight down. We had great turns in the chute and then some serious wind slammed snow for the middle and a great finish.
The best part of our finish was looking up, way up Mt-Tupper and watching some friends ski a wild line. 
Wicked line boys! The chute continues behind the cliff to a high col, chute is call Single Bench.
A better photo from Douglas.
And today we attempted the #10 couloir, all was well up the 2700 feet to the choke but from there we had to cross over the gully. Sloughs continually run down this gully, the upper rock faces always drop snow down the chute. I had hoped that the overcast skies would keep the sloughing to a minimum but the snow kept flying past us as we waited. Initially it seemed like a highway that had occasional semi trucks flying past, but then as we waited there was more traffic and some fairly large sloughs flew past us. Staring up I was teased with the possibility but we listened to the mountains and skied home.
