Backcountry
Courtesy of the Michael C Wirth YouTube Channel
The Aemmer couloir is roughly a 1,900’ direct couloir off the North Flank of Mount Temple. This line is an obvious classic for its aesthetic draw outside the Canadian town of Lake Louis. Truly, this is a great intro to ski mountaineering line that has some complexity, a large mountain next to it, but is a straightforward ascent and descent. Essentially you get the feeling you’re in the big mountains without having to deal with exposure and tricky route finding that typically comes with big mountains.
This was actually the first line I skied in Canada from the season of 2022 – preceding the Comstock, Young’s Traverse, and a variety of other non-50 classic lines I skied while in the area.
The Classic Flow is a multi-part series that will dive intimately into the journey of Michael Wirth (a 24-year-old ski mountaineer) climbing and skiing 31 of the Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America in just a single season. I hope you subscribe to stay tuned into the many more to come soon.
I embarked on this journey due to the fear of imminent last descents among these lines. With the climate changing rapidly, our snow is disappearing in many places. As a kid from the Aspen Valley, I grew up with Chris Davenport’s, Art Burrow’s and Penn Newhard’s book, The Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America, looming as a distant dream. Cody Townsend’s FIFTY project has also been a sense of motivation and inspiration to take on the challenge of skiing a variety of these lines – what an adventure! Thus, I set out in January of 2022 to ski as many lines as possible in one season to discover what was possible from the logistical, technical, and endurance capacities of myself.
