Background
“It’s been a weird snow year” seems to be inaccurate these days. Can it be weird if weird is the new normal?
A dry spell throughout the month of January across almost all of the west coast and intermountain West has made for some interesting conditions. I tried getting out a few times back in the home range, but ultimately swung and whiffed at some tricky conditions. Stoke and ideas just didn’t quite align and I ended up staying home, running, and playing with ropes in my garage. Not a bad way to spend sunny weather, but it had me all sorts of confused about what the hell was going on this ski season.
Thomas and I had chatted about his time-off window from work at Wonderland Gear Exchange in late January; we earmarked the calendar with ‘Rogers Pass’, hoping that conditions would align with time off. When green brick showed up, we honestly waffled, a lot. It seemed that back at home there was pseudo-January-corn and up north there were all flavors of crust. Indecision crept in, weighing the monetary and time cost of going up to Revelstoke for a week against the possibility of some truly shitty skiing.
Ultimately, Thomas made the call to head up there, regardless of what conditions would be, as his buddy Jake who lived in Nelson was ‘in’. That left me to waffle; my girlfriend had just left for a month to Cochamo, so I was solo-cholo at home, trying to avoid anxiously refreshing Windy and Alpine Conditions with fickle hopes of seeing precipitation show up. After some thinking, Thomas and I talked and I figured ‘fuck it, why not’. Play the game…
Trip Report
At first, Thomas proposed what I thought was a heinous itinerary to get up to Rogers:
- Leave Thursday night, drive up to Merritt or Kamloops
- Wake up early, ski the next day
My softness crept in. I think I’ll drive up separately dude, that sounds rough. But after some more thinking, driving alone sounded shitty and I liked the idea of maximizing ski time. Come on Sam, you can handle a late night, I urged myself to believe.
We met up in Everett on Thursday night and drove to Merritt that night, checking in after hours to a motel and crashing for a few hours.
Day 1 – Jan 22
We woke up by 5A and were driving by 515A en route to La Baguette…quick spin. Surprisingly, the compressed timeline to Revelstoke felt very mellow. Thomas and I filled the car time with chatting on all sorts of subjects; I think we were just filled with stoke too.
We got to Revelstoke by 830AM and stopped into La Baguette for a coffee. Thomas, Jake and I had tossed around some ideas for a first day at the pass and we ultimately settled on heading up Cheops with ambitions of either The Shelf (Cheops North #2) or STS Couloir, with Nicci’s Notch as a bail out if surface conditions were really grim. Hardly warm-up runs.
As I was in line at La Baguette, reading a Greg Hill trip report to try and figure out what length of rope to bring, I turned around and saw none other than Greg Hill. Wait, that’s Greg Hill!, I thought to myself. I’d just read his book a month prior, seeing him in person was a bit funny.
We met up with Jake and headed up to the pass, ahead of our planned departure time of 10A. To play it safe in case we went for The Shelf, I brought a 60m + 40m to make for a 40m rappel on the 60m line with the 40m as a pull cord. We made it no more than 15 minutes from the car before “oh shit, I left my harness in the car”. I turned around and raced back to grab Thomas’s harness, catching back up with the guys after not too long.
We shared goofy conversation on the climb up. It was a beautifully sunny day with some seriously crappy snow. We were hopeful that a little higher up and shaded would mean a little softer…
Atop STS we ran into a couple that was transitioning and bailing on the couloir. They didn’t have harnesses nor rope packed and didn’t like the steep entrance without belay. Thomas, Jake, and I chatted about doing a quick rappel into STS to see how the surface conditions were, as an assessment for Shelf. I set up the rope quickly and booted in; the cornice was already cut which made things easy. There was a thin surface crust, beneath which was cold and dry snow. We felt that this was good enough to keep on heading up towards Shelf, again hoping that the more shaded and protected slopes of The Shelf would mean an even thinner crust.
We topped out the ridge line on Cheops, looking over at the traverse towards The Shelf entrance and the summit. The sun was still up in the sky but fading; it was probably around 2:30 PM by this point? Booting the final ridge towards The Shelf was slow and tedious; maybe there is a better way but we didn’t take it.
Finally I found a bolted anchor on a rock near where I thought the entrance to the Shelf would be; I was using the Chris Rubens Facebook video nook as my north star. After heading to that nook and not finding an anchor, I walked back to Thomas and Jake at the bolt and looking over the other side. Sure enough, there it was: The Shelf.
We talked through the scenario and agreed on a plan: Thomas would rappel first, after he got off rappel he’d put skis on and start skiing the route to make sure the upper crux went clean, then after confirmation we’d pull the rope and continue. It would be very much less than ideal to have to ascend the rope, but it would be a way out.
The 60m rappel was more than enough; the extra buffer was nice. Thomas rapped without issue, put skis on and radioed that the snow was alright, funky but alright. There was still a surface crust but it wasn’t too heinous.
Without much delay, we heard from Thomas that the line went clean and we continued on. I pulled the rope, feeling the commitment to the line as sunlight had already left this shaded perch high on Cheops. Down we go…
The snow was not great, to be honest. It was punchy and a mixture of windboard, breaker, and old powder. The position of the line was amplified by the time of day and snow texture…it felt pretty real. We leap frogged down the shelf, making careful turns. Down at the bottom, we turned to one another: there are so many chemicals going around in my head right now, exclaimed Thomas.
We debriefed the day on the drive back down the pass; we felt our margins for the day in terms of time were a little thinner than we had wanted. We agreed that we had communicated well and executed our agreed upon plan, but unanimously felt that the more ‘reasonable’ way to start the trip off would have been STS.
We checked into our motel and decompressed the day with some hot tub time.
Day 2 – Jan 23
For our second day of the trip, we agreed to ease back on the steep and exposed skiing a bit…or at least we hoped to. We agreed to check out the Sir Donald Traverse, from Uto Col to Avalanche Col and out Avy Crest. We had originally been psyched on trying the full Sir Don to MacDon traverse, but we were pretty turned off on skiing the Herdman or Banana in the conditions we had found the Shelf.
Like many good Rogers Pass days, we started our day with a stop into Tim Horton’s on the way up Hwy 1. It was a COLD morning; I had my boot gloves on and was quite cold skinning up the Illecilewaet. We leap frogged with another duo that was doing a revised Sir Don Traverse as well, although they were going over Eagle-Avalanche Col and then out NRC (or at least that was their plan).
The traverse over to the Sir Donald-Uto Col was in good shape, not sketchy reactive faceted snow like it can sometimes be (still faceted). We were quite impressed with how large Sir Don looms above Uto, making it feel dwarfed entirely.
Skiing down onto the Uto Glacier was a little more ‘real’ than we had anticipated. The pitch down off Uto Col was firm, funky, and steep. We managed fine and skied down the absolutely frigid Uto Glacier towards the Uto Couloir. Sir Don stood high above…what a wild position!
A quick boot up to the Uto Couloir and we stood atop, peering over the other side. This looks pretty real… We had told ourselves we were going to back off steep, exposed skiing for a day but I guess that would have to wait. I led us into the Uto Couloir, finding good soft snow in the upper panel. After a few turns it choked down to a little over ski width in the crux. I shushed through, picking my way around some rocky features to some funky snow. The line was complex, a mix of steep pitch, funky snow and some early season features to navigate. I radioed up to Jake and Thomas that the line went, continuing on past the double bergschrund at the bottom.
Down on the Eagle / Avalanche Glacier we laughed at the line. It was comically sandbagged, we thought, based on our reading of the guidebook.
We chased the sun on the frigidly cold skin up towards Avalanche; Thomas’s skins began to fail. Lefty is hanging on strong!, he said. Ski straps held righty on by a thread.
We saw the duo from earlier just ahead setting a skintrack up towards the crossover towards Avalanche. We caught up to them and chatted about the day. They were going to eye up the NW Couloir of Avalanche, which we had been considering as well. By the time we all got over to it, though, it was clear it was not going to make any sense. The upper pitch of the NW Couloir is steep and the snow surface looked atrocious. Thomas, Jake and I easily agreed to just boot into the botton half of the couloir and ski out towards Avalanche Crest. We saw the duo just a bit above us side slipping (elegantly, I might add) down the couloir. Awful snow confirmed.
The runout of the NW Couloir is so impressive. It’s a massive avalanche amphitheater, similar to NRC Gully. The ambiance and position are absolutely INSANE; skiing the couloir in good snow all the way to the road would be an outrageous experience, one to wait for. We skied some breakable and semi-funky crusts in the runout, but as we got lower we began to find. . . crust-facet-pow? The grabby crust began to break down into a louder version of powder, which was hilariously fun to ski. We started to hoot and holler, welcoming easy and soft turns after many firm, grabby turns over the last day and a half. We enjoyed the crust-facet-pow all the way down to the hairpin.
While the day had more real skiing than we had anticipated, it felt much more appropriate and reasonable than day one on the Shelf. We were super impressed by the size and grandeur of Sir Donald and inspired by the NW Couloir of Avalanche, drawn to come back another time.
Day 3 – Jan 24
Thomas’s friends Henry and Tom were also in Revelstoke on a ski sabbatical after finishing their duty in the Marines post-ROTC; Thomas wanted to get us out as a big group at least one day and we agreed on Saturday. The night before, in the hot tub, we had tossed around a number of ideas, ultimately settling on the Grizzly Couloir. We didn’t anticipate great conditions, but it seemed rightsized for the group’s stoke and abilities.
Another morning, more Tim Horton’s. Bagel BELT on repeat. The cozy rhythms of Rogers Pass for me consist of some Tim’s followed by putting my boots on at the summit center.
The skintrack up Grizzly was pretty rugged this day. Refrozen debris made the typically steep skintrack pretty difficult and slippery. Given that it was green brick conditions, we probably could have taken a more aggressive skintrack out into the main slide path and avoid the trees, but we didn’t know much better and just stuck to what we had read and the skintrack that had been set. It took us quite some time to make our way above the morning inversion and shitfuck skinner in the trees.
On the shoulder travel got easier and once in the sun we warmed up and moods improved. I had been kinda grumpy in the morning, between the super crappy skintrack and feeling mixed on the big group vibe, but turned around my frown with the sun and beautiful views over the valley cloud below. We saw skiers over on Ursus Minor, skiing the north face and southeast face, making impressive turns.
The final ridge scramble was quite mellow and we all enjoyed walking high above the Connaught valley below. We discussed descent options as a group; Thomas had pointed out the face just to skier’s right of the Grizzly Couloir as an interesting alternate to the couloir. I was psyched on the face as well, wanting to save the couloir for softer, more pleasant conditions. Jake was indifferent, willing to go with Tom and Henry who were going to ski the couloir.
I was kinda psyched to ski the face, not going to lie. Reading the guidebook, it sounds like the kind of line I wouldn’t want to ski in any other conditions than green brick. It’s shallow and rocky, often faceted and is a frequent offender for slide potential. The snow surface was a thin crust above some dry snow atop a firm crust, a unique flavor of breakable that was reasonable to link turns down. Position over condition. As awful as that might sound, it was actually quite enjoyable! We met back up with the group, reconvening for crust-facet-pow below the couloir and down through the gulch below. It seemed that the inversion had helped transition the crust into faceted snow better than up higher; some of the best skiing that we had was at the mid to lower elevations!
Day 4 – Jan 25
Alarm, Tim Horton’s, drive…
Thomas used the term ‘toy truck’ to describe his affinity for the Ross Path on Mount Green. I’d never heard that term before, but I came to really like it. Thomas was drawn to Green by it’s prominence, it’s clean fall-line pitch all the way down to the road for thousands of feet. Each night as we discussed what to do the next day, he brought it up: ‘Green?’, ‘What about Greeeeeen?’. Just like a kid playing with a toy truck, he couldn’t help but play with the idea of it.
It was Jake’s last day before having to head back to Nelson for work and we agreed to head up Green, to go chase Thomas’s ‘toy truck’. A green toy truck. Our rough plan was to head up the Bonney icebox towards the Greens Glacier, do a lap around there, then climb to Ross Pass and up Green. We had taken a far-away photo of the climb to Ross Pass on our Sir Donald day and saw some exposed rock that looked potentially cruxy; we weren’t sure what was in store for us, but we figured we could either problem solve or just punt altogether. Green was attractive in this weather pattern because normally it has a massive cornice looming above near Ross Path, imposing as you climb underneath it; plus, the Ross Path itself is a massive avalanche slope. In the early season we weren’t as worried about the cornice and in green brick not as worried about the slide path.
The Bonney icebox was cold and dark as ever and we made quick work of the approach to the Greens Glacier. It appeared there had already been a party up Green, a booter was in all the way to Ross Pass! We did a lovely lap on the Greens Glacier, finding even softer crust-facet-pow. It seemed that the crust was just breaking down more day over day.
The climb up to Ross Pass was easy, the exposed rock brief and easily managed. On the way up I spotted a really neat, steep couloir off Green on its southeast flank. It looked proper! I love it when you go out on a tour and come back with more lines marked on your map of dreams than when you started.
Atop Ross Pass we stared over at Mount Smart, another dream line for another time. Such an impressive face looming above the long, flat valley below. We quickly booted up to the summit of Green, preparing to play with our truck. We skied off the ridge to skier’s right, around a funky little rock step and then down into the Ross Path. The snow was exceptional! The pitch was fall-line, with loads of playful terrain to boost off of. It reminded Thomas a lot of Coalpit Headwall in the Cottonwoods, he said.
Every couple hundred feet we’d stop for a leg break, map check, and continue onwards. The typical ski route goes more skier’s left down low in the path to avoid a major creek drainage / waterfall, but we found an easy way down skier’s right that was more along our line of descent. Near the bottom, we spotted a porcupine just hanging out in the snow. Dude, this guy needs some avy training…he’s not hanging out in the best spot. Thankfully for Mr. Porcupine, little hazard existed today, just crust-facet-pow.
At the bottom, we laughed at how absurd that run was. Top-to-bottom, it had been thousands of feet of fall-line skiing, nearly all of it enjoyable flavors of crust-facet-pow (maybe with some crustier snow at the very bottom). The skin back to Loop Brook along the Ross DAR was a little longer than we had hoped but perfectly fine and well marked; we just stared up at the huge slide paths off Ross as we sauntered along.
Thomas and I said farewell to Jake, stoked on the four days of skiing we had with him. He was a great companion, easy to get along with and level headed. I hope I get to ski again with him sometime!
Day 5 – Jan 26
Alarm, Tim Horton’s, drive…this was becoming a hilarious version of 27 year old play-world.
Thomas and I wanted one last swing at an adventurous day before we drove home the next day. The weather forecast was a little worse cloud-wise than previous days, but stability looked to remain the same with no significant new precip. We threw some spaghetti at the wall and landed on trying to link the north and south faces of Sifton together. Sifton South, in a way, was my ‘toy truck’, a line I had been very inspired to try and get on. I’d not pushed it too hard, since the conditions didn’t seem to make a ton of sense for steep southerly aspects, but as we found the crust to be breaking down it started to simmer into a more attractive idea.
We sauntered our way up the Grizzly Shoulder uptrack, chatting about nutrition and fueling in the mountains. Before long, we were approaching Little Sifton and simultaneously noting to each other that the cloud cover on Sifton was not looking great. We could see the bottom 1/3 of Sifton but the top 2/3 was obscured by cloud. We agreed that the north face was out if this did not significantly improve, but that we could at least wait a little bit and check out the south face / couloir.
We opted to top out Little Sifton and push over to a northwest facing ramp just to the west of Little Sifton that I had spotted with Lane earlier in the season. We had to do a little rock scrambling to get past the top bit, but nothing too bad. I managed to snap one of the instep buckles on my Tecnica boots…DARN! All good, ski strap to the rescue.
Visibility trended a little better as we crested the saddle between Little and Big Sifton. We skied over to the base of the south couloir and looked up: looks pretty good dude! Most of the couloir was in view now, with all but the top bit obscured. Thomas and I chatted, agreeing that with the rock walls providing some visual clarity we were still psyched on the south face. A group of two skinned up as we were transitioning; we paused to chat with them about how to handle the bootpack as two separate parties. Thomas had been involved in a previous incident where a party from above had triggered a windslab in a similar couloir, which rang the deja vu alarm a bit. We were not able to get our radios on the same frequency but talked through the plan ahead of time and were well synced. We stopped and waited for them when we lost visual sight, then continued once we had regained it.
The south face / couloir is quite a beautiful line! It reminded me a lot of the Sickle on Mt Moran, with a similar pitch and feature. To start, you traverse to climber’s left above a small cliff and then enter the fall-line couloir proper. The line never exceeds 40-45 degrees. We found good snow on climber’s left and shittier snow on climber’s right, closer to the overhanging rock face.
We topped out Sifton in not-quite whiteout, but near that. The north face will have to wait another day. Thomas and I had no interest in milk jug skiing above cliffs. We walked back to the couloir, did the hypothermia dance for a bit as we waited for the party of two, then pushed out into the couloir as they crested the col.
The first turns off the top were steep but lovely, in confidence inspiring snow that welcomed your skis. Dude, it’s amazing, I radioed back to Thomas. Connecting with a hop turn gave the feeling of a brand new windshield wiper, cleanly pushing water off the windshield. Whoosh, whoosh.
We broke the couloir up into a few pitches, skiing out the bottom with childlike grins on our faces. We hadn’t connected with our grand idea for the day, but we made just about as much lemonade as we could have with the weather. We pushed over to the Little Sifton traverse exit and enjoyed thousands of feet of well-ripened crust-facet-pow. I was blown away at how fun the Little Sifton traverse pitch was, assuming it was just kinda garbage-y.
All things considered, the south face of Sifton skied just about as well as I could have asked for. While we didn’t gave great visibility, we had plenty in the couloir proper and the snow was excellent for green brick conditions. This is a beautiful line, proudly sticking high above the highway, with a long connection into the Little Sifton traverse that makes for a ridiculous exit run. I’d love to repeat this one!
Day 6 – Jan 27
Thomas and I agreed to ski a half day before driving home, returning back to reality. Thomas wanted to ski Avy Crest with Tom and Henry as his finale, but I was feeling like a solo morning to just let my mind wander. Thomas was totally cool with that and we agreed to meet up at the Illecilewaet parking lot at 1230 PM PST to start the drive home.
I tossed around a few ideas in my head, but ultimately just landed at heading up Connaught solo with options on the table. I was most psyched on skiing the SE Face of Ursus Minor, or maybe STS if I had extra time or changed motivation. I threw a 40m rope in the pack but I didn’t bring a harness, figuring I could just hand rap into STS if need be. I’d scoped it on the first day and it seemed plenty reasonable.
Alarm, Tim Horton’s, drive…
Starting by 715A, I threw on some podcasts and found the solo rhythm that I at times love in the hills. Nobody around, just me, a quiet drone of a podcast hosts’s voice, and my thoughts. High clouds were burning off and I felt psyched on getting up Ursus Minor. I pushed up Ursus, reaching the col with enough time to do another lap on something. As I skinned up the Ursus shoulder I spotted a thin couloir splitting the SE face of Ursus. It caught my eye: if I have enough time after skiing the SE Face, I’ll try for that, I told myself. I snapped a far-away photo, noting a grey spot in the middle of the couloir that looked to be tricky. I figured I could always boot out of the couloir if need be, not concerned with snow stability.
The scramble to the summit of Ursus Minor was fun, kind of ‘pick your spice level’ at times. Sadly, I was a goob and dumped a load of snow in my thicker gloves when transitioning to booting. Darn! Thin gloves it was. There was but a dusting of new snow on the crust-facet-pow mixture, which wasn’t concerning but did make the crust a little more substantive.
I clicked into my skis atop Ursus, psyched to ski off the northeast ridge. I found the line not nearly as exposed at it might seem from afar; the ridge is wide and not too steep. Granted, I did have it in pretty good condition, with some light fluff atop a supportive base. The guidebook talks about how the ridge can be quite windblown and awful; I’d imagine it feels more sportier when that is the case. After a few turns on the ridge, I found the entrance panel into the SE Face / couloir feature and linked turns down into it. The new snow was sluffing off fast but not troublesome. The couloir feature was quite enjoyable and plenty wide to link turns easily.
I skied out the bottom and traversed over to the skinny couloir I had spotted. I snapped another photo, trying to get a better view of this potential crux. It was clear that there might be some downclimbing or potentially a brief rappel, but nothing that seemed insurmountable. I felt dumb for not throwing my tiny glacier harness in the pack, but figured if I really needed to rappel I could jerry-rig something, or just punt and boot out if things seemed really silly. I don’t typically like taking thinner margins when I’m solo, but this didn’t feel all that stupid, as the snow was locked in and worst case I just boot out and am 5 minutes late to Thomas. I skied down to the Ursus Trees uptrack and pushed back up to the col with some time to spare.
Scramble round two was just as fun as the first and before long I was atop the line, just to the south of the summit block of Ursus Minor. I clicked into skis and began down the couloir, finding some crunchier snow than the other line but still plenty good. As I made my way down, it was clear that this crux wasn’t going to go clean with skis, but I saw a slung horn to my skier’s left and figured I could scope it out on the rope. I got to a good spot, took skis off and put crampons on, and with ice axe and rope in tow I made my way towards the crux step. I felt pretty silly for putting a munter on a carabiner on the gear loop of my backpack, to be honest. Janky, yes. Not super proud of it but I didn’t really need to weight the rappel at all. I found an easy sneak to skier’s left on the short, ~6 foot ice step where I could use rocks to lower myself.
After the rappel, I clicked back into skis and linked the crunchiest turns of the day in the lower couloir. The lower couloir is pretty thin, wide enough to connect turns but off-camber to skier’s left. One turn feels great, the other feels highside into crunch. Still fun!
I punched out the bottom, looked back up, and thought about what I had done for a minute. Rappeling without a harness felt pretty dumb, to be honest. Not something to make a habit of. Takeaway: just put your fucking tiny glacier harness in the pack when the rope goes in dummy!
I made it back to my car by 12PM and was over to Thomas by 1215 PM, just ahead of our agreed upon time. The last 30 minutes of my tour hadn’t felt the most relaxing, my head still spinning a bit from problem solving in the couloir and then skiing out the luge in a hurry to get to Thomas. I had gotten the solo time I had wanted, though, and Thomas got the time he sought with Tom and Henry. It felt like a great balance of partnership, acknowledging when it’s okay to just ‘do your own thing’.
Final Thoughts
Heading up to Rogers seemed improbable to be enjoyable, but wow was I wrong. Thomas and I had a blast together and more than just the skiing, I really appreciated how we traveled together outside of the mountains. We both had similar willingness to rally, live cheap, and give each other space at times. I appreciated Thomas’s coolness with giving me solo space when I needed it, either on my solo morning or just at the hotel. Not everyone has the same social battery.
On our drive back we felt it was necessary to stop at Comstock Road. Just before we headed up to Rogers, Spencer Harkins and Mali Noyes (along with their buddies) had sent the Comstock Couloir.
