This weekend’s sled access ridiculousness was Mt Farnham. No, not Farnham Glacier, but the mountain, the tallest mountain in the Purcell mountains. As the Purcells are kind of my home range with Kicking Horse located within, it’s a little bit extra personal. Continue reading Mount Farnham
Tag Archives: mountaineering
Beaver Glacier Camp
I’ve been looking at Beaver Mountain for a while. I think I saw it from the Dogtooth Range in late season-July a few years back, and its north face looked like it should be a perfect steep canvas of white in winter. Of course, that isn’t the case, it’s a traffic jam of seracs trying to escape the face to join with the glacier below, but I didn’t know that at the time and it was a nice image in my head. Ever since, I’ve been interested in getting back there. The project has been on the backburner for a while, slowly becoming more tangible and less of just a ski bum’s daydream as I gained the skills needed to realize the fantasy. Last week, weather was looking good and stability was great, so two days before we were set to leave I asked Ian if he could make it out. He thought it was an awesome idea, so I booked a couple days off work to make an extra long weekend and started packing. Continue reading Beaver Glacier Camp
Sifton
After the last few weeks of high pressure and warm, I had written off skiing at the pass. But apparently a storm came and went without registering on my radar, and left in its wake great alpine conditions. OK, let’s go skiing! Continue reading Sifton
Rockies XXL
Today I skied the longest run on the Trans-Canada: Mt Vaux west face. Two thousand meters of vertical, straight down. No flat section, no traversing, no trees to dodge, just a massive run straight down. If you dropped a ski, you could potentially have a very very bad day. Continue reading Rockies XXL
Sorcerer Lodge
A few weeks ago, I was approached with an incredible deal on a week up at Sorcerer Lodge, so good that I couldn’t refuse. I was so stoked I hadn’t even cleared it with work before I committed to it! Anyways, things ended up working out, and before I knew it, I was on a heli ride into the heart of the Selkirks. Continue reading Sorcerer Lodge
Wisdom
I’ve wanted these lines since I first skied at KHMR. They stare at you, nice and close to the hill, but with a much higher skill level requirement than the rest of the easily accessed rad terrain just out of bounds. Yesterday I finally got the Wisdom Tooth and the Middle Tooth. Luke and I putzed around the KHMR backcountry the day prior and found excellent stability with only the very dormant mid-dec layer producing hard results above treeline on south aspects. So yesterday we went to tick off some lines. Continue reading Wisdom
Swiss South Face
Ho boy, another weekend of high pressure! Ian and I went to Hermit parking with the loose objective of something on the Rogers-Swiss massif. Once we battled our way up the infernal raincrust and popped out on the Swiss glacier there was already a group well up the Rogers headwall, and another swooping around to one of the Swiss couloirs. We took lunch and waited to see which couloir the second group would go for. Continue reading Swiss South Face
Ursus Minor SE Couloir (and others)
Damn, I love Ursus Minor! Such a cool climb up, from trees to a great bit of steep skinning up the S face, then scrambling up some difficult looking rock (emphasis on “looking”) to the summit. We went for the SE couloir, one of the lines I haven’t yet done on this awesome mountain. Based on previous adventures, I was expecting a super sketchy rollover onto the north face on our way to the couloir, but the NE ridge was perfectly well-behaved and straightforward, and with good coverage. Continue reading Ursus Minor SE Couloir (and others)
Destroyer of Worlds
Destroyer Peak, BC rockies. A pretty small peak of 2700m and change, but somehow maintains a rather large glacier. And two steep rad ice faces on the N and NE flanks. Continue reading Destroyer of Worlds
The Friendship-breaker
Hewitt Peak, the friend-breaker, as I explained to Ryan last weekend. A long, brutal bushwhack to a south facing gulley on a peak that doesn’t have a lot of name cred and then all the way back out. Sure to break a friendship. So it was another solo trip for me. Continue reading The Friendship-breaker