McCoubrey had a major rockfall on the upper face since last I was there<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nI put the skis on and went back down the summit ridge and tried to follow my tracks up, as there was a roll making it difficult to pick out my schrund hop from the top. The snow was not great, I made very careful turns, as the exposure down the main face was huge even if I couldn’t see it from the roll. I found it to be good enough to get edges in, and found my schrund crossing. There was a rare patch of fresh snow below the little huck, so it was easy to commit. The planar ice chunk was nice consistent turns, with fresh snow here and there. That came to an end though, and I made my way between crevasses to the roll.<\/p>\n
I knew the roll would be the most difficult skiing on the whole route, it’s just so steep and the roll must be carefully navigated to stay off the parts definitely not in condition to accept edges. After it got to its steepest and stopped rolling over, I made a turn which got a little fast, but good enough, and made a second so I didn’t go too far over skiers right into the scree. On the second, I lost the edge grip in the ice, and surfed the skis into something between completing the turn and a straightline, the speed I built up sliced off and captured enough snow\/ice that the bases would hook up even if the edges wouldn’t and I was back in control and finished with the roll. The entire skiers right of the lower glacier was covered in flotsam from the bowling alley coming off the middle face, so I made a quick traverse over to the far skiers left of the face. After a quick few turns on the side Luke skied, I was out of good snow. The rest was harder than the bare glacial ice I’d skied a bit of further up the face, and intermixed with rocks, so I just made it down back to the gear stash by any means and then fell over while taking my skis off. A good place for a fall!<\/p>\n