Seven Steps of Paradise

Lots happening lately but somehow no blog entries?>!? Well Steve Romeo  of Tetonat.com , and friends came up for the Kootenay Cold Smoke Powder Festival and afterwards they came and visited Roger’s Pass. Being a man of the Selkirks I always like to impress people with our mountains, their size, skiability and quantity/quality of snow needs to be shown off. Sometimes it doesn’t work and people leave a little dejected; Andrew Mclean’s experiences have never been great.

With a new load of snow over a variety of weaknesses in the snow pack, I wondered how adventurous we would get. The first day I took them up to Bruins pass and on the way we witnessed an avalanche incident, and thought we were going to be digging people out. It turned out that they were okay, and had triggered a slide 200 m across with a 50 cm crown. Pretty sizable slide. Lots to be learned from their experience.

We had a few runs in Ursus trees and then climbed up the bed surface and went and skied 8812 bowl. 3500 feet of pretty decent skiiing. Steve was mildly impressed but I wanted to give them a real tour.

The avalanche hazard being what it was I had to make sure we could move around safely while still getting a Roger’s Pass experience. So we ventured towards the classic Young’s Peak and the Seven Steps of Paradise. What a great day for such a fine tour, the mountains looked amazing and the tour was aesthetic.

The tour was superb and then powder was better than anticipated and we all had great turns to the valley floor. I hope Reed,Zee, and Steve enjoyed the Selkirks and I imagine they will be back for more someday.