Amber's Bomber Adventures

Wapta Traverse, April 6 – 12, 2013

Participants:

Tom Wolfe (ACMG Mountain Guide)

Stefanie Falz (Tail Guide)

Amber McMinn

Michael McMinn

Jennifer Coffman

Deon Molloy

Al Tinholt

The Team

On Saturday, April 6 Mike and I left Vancouver to head to Field, BC to commence our journey across the Wapta Icefields. We’d been planning, training and looking forward to this trip for months and we’re stoked to finally be on our way! It all started back in the fall when our plans to ski in Roger’s Pass fell through. I suggested to Mike that maybe this would be a good year to try something different and longer, maybe a Traverse instead of day trips. How about the Wapta? It’s a classic, right? Some emails back and forth with Tom, figuring out some logistics and pulling together a team and it was all coming together.

Packing

We left Vancouver at 7am and after some traffic on Hwy 1 leaving the City and a 20 min road closure for snow removal on the Coquihalla, we were cruising to the Rockies. As we travelled along the Coquihalla, we suddenly remembered that there was a time change between Vancouver and Field, and we had a Team meeting at 6pm.... Oops! Good thing we left early! The drive was fairly uneventful; we stopped along the way to try and find a Wapta icefields map, which are apparently impossible to come by, and made it into Field by 5pm.

Sorting Gear

We checked into our room at the KickingHorse Lodge and went down to the Truffle Pigs Bistro to meet the group we’d spend the next week skiing with. After the initial introductions we enjoyed a fabulous dinner at Truffle Pigs as we talked about the trip and got to know each other. Then we sorted our gear and food and got a good rest for the upcoming adventure.

Sunday, April 7 – “The Slog”

Day 1: Peyto Lake Trail Head to Peyto Hut

9km, 2200 ft Elev. Gain

We got up at 6:30am and after a quick breakfast at Truffle Pigs, we loaded the car and hit the road for Peyto Lake. We got geared up with our fully loaded (i.e. heavy) packs and headed for the trail through the trees and down onto Peyto Lake. We quickly found that the conditions on the trail to the lake were horrifying with a breakable crust and steep icy sections. We managed to ski parts of the trail and boot pack the rest to get everyone down to the lake without injury, which we later learned is more than can be said for other unfortunate groups .

Crossing Peyto Lake

Boot Packing

Once on the lake we continued along with relative ease, enjoying the views and the sun. The snow was settling around quite readily with constant “Woomphing” on the flats; it’s an unsettling sound and feeling. Once we reached the end of the Peyto Lake we had to take off our skis and boot pack along the creek to gain the moraine leading to Peyto Glacier. The moraine started out reasonably mellow, but quickly steepened and involved some more boot packing in several places to reach the top.

Climbing the Morraine

Almost there....

After a small break at the top we headed downhill for about 100m, past the Glaciology huts and to the toe of the Peyto Glacier. Since we were gaining the glacier and the snow seemed thin in places, we roped up and ascended to the Peyto Hut. The Peyto Hut was quite spacious and bright with all of its large windows and was probably my favorite hut of the trip. We spent the night relaxing and getting to know each other over a 4-course dinner of soup, veggies and dip, curry noodles, dessert bars and tea. Yes, we ate like rock-stars on this trip; no boil-in-a-bag food for us!

Peyto Hut

Monday, April 8

Day 2: Peyto Hut to Bow Hut

6km, 900 ft Elevation gain + Climbing Mount Habel (10,083 ft Elev)

Skiing towards Mt Habel

On our second day, we awoke to fairly clear conditions and after our coffee and breakfast burritos, we packed our gear and continued on our way. We started the morning with a beacon practice and avalanche safety refresher session and then headed out to bag a peak. The day’s objective was Mt. Habel (aka Mt Rhondda North), a 10 083 ft high peak.

Climbing Mt Habel

Boot packing up Mt Habel's ridge

It was the first time up this peak for everyone, including Tom, so we weren’t 100% if it would go. We skied to the base of the peak, cached our extra gear in the snow and began to climb. It turned out that we could follow a ramp with minimal difficulties almost directly to the summit. We ditched our skis on the false summit, and avoiding the cornices, boot packed to the summit where we had a summit celebration and enjoyed the views over our lunch.

Summit Party

After Lunch we enjoyed a glorious 1000 ft of powder skiing down from the false summit, collected our cached gear and carried on towards Bow Hut. The ski from Mt Habel to the high point on the icefield was fairly casual and we ended our day with a fun ski down into Bow Hut, located below St Nicholas Peak.

Skiing Down Mt Habel

Bow hut is huge! Two rooms with separate sleeping quarters and living space, room for 30 people and even indoor “out”houses. Pure backcountry luxury!

Bow Hut

That night we enjoyed a Mexican taco dinner and entertained ourselves by getting to know our fellow hut mates and watching Deon and Stef ski an extra lap and jump cornices outside of the hut.

Bow Hut -inside

Tuesday, April 9 – “Arctic Exploration Day”

Day 3: Bow Hut to Balfour Hut

8km, 1800 ft El. gain + Climbing Mount Gordon(10,510 ft El.) and St. Nicholas Peak (9,639 ft El.)

Bundled Up

Today was the cold day of the trip. We woke up to a beautiful, clear sky, but -16c and high winds. We were all bundled up in a laughable amount of layers and looked like we were heading out for an arctic expedition. We started the day by climbing back up to the icefield from Bow hut and wrapping around to avoid any looming crevasses while gaining the flanks of Mt Gordon. At the base of Mt Gordon we cached our extra gear again and started the climb.

Heading to Mt Gordon

I was dragging my butt today, a combination of it being day 3 mixed with the cold and the increasing altitude, but luckily my awesome teammates waited for me before gaining the summit ridge and with a short break to catch my breath I was able to step it up and carry on. The views from the top of Mt Gordon were amazing, we lingered for a bit to take some photos and have a snack on the summit before continuing our adventure to ski down Gordon’s NE face.

View from Mt Gordon's Summit

Mt Gordon Summit Shot

As we started the descent, Stefanie went ahead to take a look and asked us all to stop due to hazards ahead. It turned out we would need to traverse to avoid some cliffs and crevasses, but that would put us directly into a 45 + degree slope with a convex roll containing a potential wind slab. Tom skied down onto the face to check it out and with a calculated ski cut he set off a size 1.5/2 avalanche. Everyone was safe and it was done in a controlled manner, but it was still a bit of a tense moment. I’ve never experienced an avalanche on a ski trip before or had someone in my party set one off. Since the slope was obviously unstable, Stef led the rest of us back up the face where we traversed to a mellower line and enjoyed some fabulous powder turns down onto the icefields.

Skiing Mt Gordon's NE Face

Avalanche

From there we collected our gear and started the journey up onto the St Nicholas-Olive Col (9500 ft El.). The wind was really blasting on the col and we weren’t keen to linger, but both Mt Olive and St Nicholas Peaks looked impressive and were just begging to be climbed; we made a group decision to go for the summit of St Nicholas. We ditched our skis and with minimal difficulties boot packed up to the summit.

St Nicholas-Olive Col

Climbing St Nicholas

The last 100ft or so felt a bit spicy, I’m not used to climbing steep, exposed snow without crampons, especially down climbing, but it was secure enough to be do-able and with Tom’s guidance it felt reasonable to carry on. And it turned out to be worth every bit of energy with the crazy awesome views from the top and the accomplishment of having climbed such a cool looking route.


St Nicholas Peak Summit Party

Once we came back to the col we collected our gear and enjoyed some more turns down the glacier towards Balfour hut. There were great views of Mt Balfour along the way and an overview of the next days route up to the Balfour High Col. Accessing the hut required some mandatory air and the snow on the slopes near the hut was a bit crusty and difficult to ski, but it was all manageable, even with burning, tired legs.

Almost there.....

Balfour Hut

To Be Continued.......
(Click here for Part 2)

Click Here for full photo Album

Here is the MCR report from our trip:

On March 22-24, Mike and I went to the Mount Baker Tour-o-Rama event with the ACC for a weekend of ski touring. 50 of us from the Alpine Club spent the weekend skiing, split boarding or snowshoeing and exploring the Mt Baker backcountry.

On the first day, 22 of us met up in Vancouver to carpool down to Mt Baker. After traveling, border crossing and gas stops we reconvened in the Mt Baker Ski Resort parking area shortly after 10 am. The plan for the day was to ski up towards Lake Ann, gain the Shuksan Arm and then ski down the back side of the ridge into the ski resort and back to the waiting cars. The catch being that the parking lot gates would be locked around 5pm. We started up the cat track to the backcountry gates and then headed towards the Swift Creek Drainage. At this point the weather had been partly clear, but was quickly socking in. Once we reached the slopes that dropped into the Creek the group had differing opinions on what they were comfortable skiing, so we split into 3 groups and picked our poison. Our group opted to dig a test pit and see what was going on in the snow before heading down the slope. We got reasonable results and headed down, but unfortunately once we reached the bottom the rest of the group had disappeared. We opted to stay put, have some lunch and turn on our radio in hopes of contacting the rest of the team. After about half an hour we gained contact with the group and determined that they were about 15min further along, also having a lunch break while they waited for us. We geared up and caught up to them to carry on with our journey.

From this point there is a long traverse through the drainage until you hit the slopes of Mt Ann. The snow started falling as we traversed and once we were on the side slopes it was really coming down. We climbed the slopes of Mt Ann to the col between Mt Ann and Shuksan Arm where the group reconvened. We arrived at the col in a complete white out and decided that it was best to retrace our steps instead of continuing into the unknowns of Shuksan Arm.

We skied back down in some fabulous powder but horrendous visibility, then we skied back along the traverse through the swift creek drainage and back to the waiting cars. We finished our tour at around 5 pm and then headed back to Glacier for some dinner at “Chair 9”. After a couple hours of burgers and beers we made our way to the Mountaineers Lodge where we, selected our chores and out bunks and settled in for the weekend.

On Saturday Mike led a group of 7 of us into the Mt Baker backcountry for a day of yoyo skiing. We woke up at 7 am for a tasty pancake breakfast at the Lodge and got ready for a day in the fabulous sunshine. Once our group was ready, Mike, Catherine, Steven, Jill, Dave, Cheryl and I put on our skis and skied right to our destination from the front door of the lodge. The first run we did was a short run into the swift creek drainage. From there we realized that the avalanche conditions were quite stable so we thought we’d try something bigger. We headed up to the ridge in Austin Pass and did a couple runs from the top of ridge across a flat section and then straight down into Swift creek.

We ended up doing a few laps in that general area, with breaks in between to watch the hardcore skiers and splitboarders throw themselves off of the backcountry jumps that they had built. The snow was surprisingly light and untouched which was surprising given the large number of people in the backcountry and the warm sun. After a leisurely lunch in the sun we headed back up to Austin Pass for one last run and then we skied down to the Bagley lakes area. The run into Bagley lakes was pretty chewed up and heavy and definitely not the best run of the day, but it was still nice to check it out and see the area instead of skiing back on a cat track. We arrived back at the lodge at 3:30 pm for Apres Ski and relaxed until it was time for our tasty dinner and dessert provided by the lodge.

On Sunday, the last day of Tour-O-Rama, Mike lead a small group of us on the Table Mountain Circuit. Catherine, Steven, Mike and I headed out directly from the lodge after breakfast for a tour under the blue-bird skies. We started with a leisurely climb up to Austin Pass and Artist point and then did our first descent onto the side slopes of Table Mountain. From there we spread out to traverse under the south face of Table Mountain and limit our exposure to the avalanche danger from above.

Another short climb and some fabulous view of both Mt Baker and Mt Shuksan and we were dropping down onto the west face face of Table Mountain. The slopes on the west side of the mountain had excellent snow and we thoroughly enjoyed the skiing on this short run. after another short traverse we came to the Iceberg lake drainage. We stayed low here and dropped through the trees and then out onto the lake. We took our time crossing the lake and enjoying the sun before beginning the big climb of the day up to Herman's Saddle. Once we gained Herman's Saddle we took half-hour break and enjoyed our lunch in the sun up on the Saddle. The day was warm, clear and calm and we could have easily spent all afternoon relaxing and enjoying the surrounding view. After lunch we enjoyed a nice, long run down from the Saddle onto Bagley lakes and made quick work of the short traverse back to the waiting cars. The full tour, including breaks, took us 5 hours and made for an early start on the uneventful journey back home to Vancouver.