Tim, Nick, Christian, Line, Ben, Anne and I enjoyed a powder day skiing steep trees off Rohr Ridge. The avalanche danger was considerable at treeline and above, and high in the alpine. With this in mind, we focused on tree skiing all weekend on the Duffey Lake road. It snowed 40cm the previous night, and continued to snow all day. We returned to the cars with another 20cm of fresh snow. All of the storm snow fell ontop of a firm ice crust, and we noticed sluffing on this layer all day long. We skinned up through the steep south facing trees of Rohr ridge. The trail breaking was deep at times, and upward progress was generally slow. Visibility was minimal, but the entire route is mostly in tight trees so it’s no big deal.
We skied down Rocky Horror Powder Show, a 650m run that connects steep glades and open rock slopes down to cutblock above the normal Marriott trail. It’s steep enough to be of concern at the top, but the terrain in the rest of the run felt suitable for the conditions.
It was a very wet day, and the snow resembled more like the stuff typical of Whistler, but the skiing was quite good still.
The next day, we went over to the other side of the highway to ski the trees of Chief Pascall. The weather was much better, with occasional sunny periods. We parked at the weather station, crossed Cayoosh Creek, skied east along the logging road until the second cutblock, and then climbed up and mostly left to get up to the good skiing. There were initial concerns that the runs would be tracked out from the Saturday skiers, but their tracks were almost completely buried. The snow was best again in the trees, with 60cm of fluffy snow. Trail breaking was hardwork again. The snow wasn’t very good in the open alpine and we skied a few amazing laps in the trees again.
Anne skiing a mellow open slope below the northwest ridge. The snow was definitely wind affected in the alpine. We observed a Size 2 avalanche on the northwest face of the bump in steep rocky terrain, likely from Saturday night.
