Emperor Peak’s been on my list for a while. A rockies-like sheet of ice for a north face, but in the west Purcells, so with the bonus of a huge snowpack. After a series of difficult longer trips with little payoff and lots of blood and sweat, this was just what we needed.<\/p>\n
Ian and I were getting tired of bashing the poor sleds dirtmobiling everywhere after the inevitable avy path or shady spot with a deep snow drift blocked the remaining dry road. So we decided to sled in one last time, and carry a massive amount of supplies, to get maximum bang for the buck out of an abusive approach in the BC rockies. After banging the sleds up dry roads a few clicks though, and shoveling sled paths across avy debris, the final avy path had washed out the road, yet not brought down any snow which we could use to build a ramp to continue on. There was no possible way to get across. We were pretty bummed, there’s a lot of planning that goes into living nine days in the mountains all to be snatched away so arbitrarily. We started into the whiskey stores and discussed options and came up with just more BC rockies, which we had planned to do a great deal of this spring. But we were sick of the access issues brought on by the big melt. Finally, Ian brought up Emperor. I had nearly forgotten about it, intending to do it earlier in the winter some season. But it was perfect, the road was said to be plowed and it was all just highway driving and a short logging road then up a valley on foot, hardly any more complicated than your standard Parks approach. Finally, we would go ski a beautiful peak where nothing can go wrong, or at least that was the plan.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n So we zipped back down, loaded the sleds back up and went to Golden, chucked all the gear into my car and were off to Meadow Creek via Revy. It’s been years since I’ve been skiing further west than Glacier National Park, something I should work to remedy in the future. A very filling Mexican buffet in Revy, then down to the ferry, then after a 10 minute wait we were off across the lake. I’ve never driven hwy 31 before, and in the night it was a beautiful road, any oncoming traffic (of which we met none) well-advertised, pure driving pleasure. We kept going past Meadow Creek and parked to car camp below the nameless creek we’d be heading up the following day.<\/p>\n When we rolled out of bed late morning, we started making our breakfast. But after much trying and swearing, Ian couldn’t get his Whisperlite to pump up, which was bad news for our oatmeal that morning and even worse for the dehydrated meals we had planned for later. So we hopped back in the car, hoping to find something in Meadow Creek. Unfortunately they had camping supplies, but no stoves there. So we went south to Slocan, where the only stoves were big single-burner Coleman stoves with the steel propane cylinders. We made do with that and jetted back, and started the approach in early afternoon.<\/p>\n