Report from December 9 ,2021

We went for a long walk and a short ski in the British Columbia, Canada backcountry.

Avalanche danger was rated as “Considerable” and rising so we chose some mellow terrain that we knew would be fun and a challenge to get to.

We had the entire drainage to ourselves all day.

The travel right of the bat was easy with deep enough snow and solid snow bridges for the many creek crossings.

The crux of the climb was a chasm waterfall feature that again, was well bridged where we needed it.

Above the waterfall, the uphill travel got brutal with the rain crust from the atmospheric river they had here last week.

Fox and Ryan near the top of our climb. image: snowbrains

We battled for what felt like an hour in icy, slippery, brutal snow and ice through dense trees.

When we finally got out of that zone, things improved hugely and we topped out on a small, wind-lipped, sub-peak that offered no views due to the socked-in weather.

We dug a pit at treeline, executed 3 compression tests, and saw CT 16, CT 15, CT 13 that all broke at the new snow/rain crust interface.

The crux of the climb. image: snowbrains

I didn’t love these results so we definitely kept our terrain choices on the mellower side up high.

Down lower, the snow felt more stable and supported and we tipped the angle we skied a bit more, but not much more.

The upper slope we skied held deep snow and low angle floating us like barges and keeping our speed down.

One of my favorite zones on Earth. image: snowbrains

The 2nd slope we skied was steeper and pillowy and we were hitting the rain crust occasionally but the skiing was great and fast.

A bit further down, the rain crust was fierce with bizarre terrain features that looked glacial at times.

We crossed the crux waterfall easily as the snow happened to be good in that spot but it was still spicy with the penalty being falling into a waterfall chasm that you would not have come back from…