Rogers Glacier

The weather man predicted “cloudy with sunny breaks”. So I went up to the pass with hopes of perhaps climbing and skiing off Mt-Rogers. But I never actually saw the summit, the clouds moved in with such frequency that the sunny periods were far too brief for me to make a summit attempt.

So I toured up 4500 feet onto the moraines and the toe of the glacier. At this point I was in a complete whiteout, just wandering through the soup. It’s funny i may not be able to remember people names but I usually always remember terrain features. I have not been up to Mt-Rogers since last year and through the whiteout I managed to navigate up the usual route. Even though I could not see 25 feet around me.  So instead of heading up to the summit I set up a 1200 foot lap and started shredding some dust on crust. 20-25 cms of nice snow lay over a rain crust and provided some decent skiing. 5 runs and my goal was complete.

 10080 feet in 6.5 hrs.

Day 74

Two years ago when I toured 1 000 000 feet I ended up skiing 37 ten thousand footers, so today I doubled my previous best. That’s pretty exciting, all this hard work and great skiing and now I have toured 74 ten thousand footers.

After a late day, like yesterday,I always like to show my gratitude to Tracey by letting her sleep in and getting some kid time for myself. Charley and I went out to the coffee shop and let Tracey sleep in till 9, then Trace and I went for a twenty minute run and some social time. Some more family time and then touring by 1pm.

I cruised up Mt_mackenzie, and set up my laps just like the other day. I put my head down and skinned my butt off. The skiing was not as good as the other day, more crusts with less snow. But I kept at it and in 5 hrs 45 minutes I hiked and skied 11 000 feet.

A mission to nowhere

Well somewhere, but somewhere really far away that was almost near a summit but not really. Ian,Aaron Chris, Mark and myself decided to try and summit Mt-Hassler in a day. Hassler is the second highest peak in the Selkirks and is an awesome mountain.

We left the parking lot at 6 am and toured up onto the illecilleweat and over to the Geiki glacier. From here we shredded down the heavily crevassed glacier and down into the  valley.

I had thought it would take us around 4 hrs up to this point but it took around 6 hrs. I guess using the equation that you add 8 minutes extra per hour per person than I was right. 4 hrs + 4 extra people times 8 minutes times 4 hours = 6hrs

From there we toured up the Dawson valley and onto the Dawson glacier. Going up the lookers left we toured onto a morraine that curled up into the alpine. Keeping us safe from hazards yet right in the heart of it all. Touring up we worked our way up Mt-Fox and onto the twisted rock by 3 pm. By now we had traveled 19 kms and 9600 feet of gain. Sitting on the Twisted rock we tried to summon the energy to go for the summit which would have been 2 hrs to the top and an hour back to where we were. Having only seen the summit twice during the day we looked for an excuse to turn around. The weather did not look promising so we turned and started heading home, which was very far away.

From the valley we followed our down tracks back up the Geiki and to the top of forever young. On the way up we watched as the sun warmed up a cornice and let it drop which triggered a fair size slide.  It came nowhere near us or our skin track but it still warned us to make the appropriate terrain decisions. By 7.45 pm we were on the top of Forever Young and on our way home. The chute was in perfect condition, 30 cms of nice powder lay blanketed the whole way down it. I snuck in for first tracks and had the best ski down Forever Young that I have ever had. And then we skied out the Asulkan. Back at the cars by 8.45. 14.5 hrs and 13 700 feet of gain.

Its amazing that I have such strong friends, although we were all tired we had just  toured 40+ kms and 13 700 feet. That’s the largest day I have ever done with four other people. So although we never made it to Hassler I learned a lot about what it will take to ski this mountain in a day, and I also learned more about Rogers Pass and some more hidden gems.