Report from January 4, 2025

Day #2 of our BC hut trip brought mostly cloudy skies, mild temps, low avalanche danger, and the unknown.

We fell into our normal default of skiing trees and pillows below the hut.

The snow is fast and loose here right now we quickly realized that skiing pillows was not gonna work…

The snow was too shallow and too fast to make pillow skiing viable.

I tried 2 pillow lines.

They both went like this:

• Hit pillows
• Gather too much speed
• Make it through pillows
• Crash in runout to eliminate speed

Lesson learned, we moved on.

We climbed out of the valley and back to the hut for lunch.

From there we decided to finally take advantage of the low avalanche danger and decent weather.

We summited the ridge and peered over into the Dark Side.

Only once had we ever ventured onto this steep northern wildland.

All we knew was that it was avalanche country and in general we deal with persistant weak layers in the snowpack and high avalanche danger here this time of year.

The chute we found looked good.

Tyler dropped first and found a left-side option.

I dropped next and tried the right.

Dr. Seuss features and powder greeted my curiosity.

I dropped in a wild chute that funneled me down onto a dreamy apron and a solid adrenaline spike.

We were all ecstatic at the base.

Group hug.

Long skin track back to our drainage and a fun powder run in the sunshine to close out the day.

• 3,000-vertical-feet
• 5.5-miles
• 6.5 hours

Appetizers, sauna, group dinner, dessert, and splendid conversations to close out the night.

Thanks, BC!

Photos