Home > Trip Reports > February 13-16, 2004, Rogers Pass

February 13-16, 2004, Rogers Pass

2/13/04
Canada BC
3517
5
Posted by Pete A on 2/16/04 6:43pm
Toured for four days up at Rogers over the long weekend. Suprsingly stable snow conditions, or maybe I was just expecting to see a snowpack at complex and potentially dangerous as last season. We really lucked out with the weather and the choices of tours that we opted to do and we found excellent snow every day.
We skied Youngs Peak on Friday, took a little over eight hours round trip via the Asulkan/steps of paradise approach and descent. We opted to avoid the Illecillewaet because we didn't want to deal with roping up and probing for crevasse hazards on the climb up to the Neve. Saw some evidence of natural slide activity, all on south and west aspects, mainly small point releases from exposed rocks.
Also, almost all the snow that was shelted from the wind and at or below treeline has 1/2" long surface hoar crystals...could be something to keep an eye out for as new snow falls on top of this layer and the hoar remains intact.
Saturday we yoyoed an east facing aspect on a ridge between Video Peak and Ursa Major, again more crust on anything that had seen sun, but out of the sun the snow was still calf to knee deep and dusty.
Sunday we skied Bonney Trees, more excellent north facing terrain up there when most everything else was suncrusted. A few inches of new snow from overnight, did a shovel tap test above treeline on a 38 degree pitch and couldn't get the column to fail.
Yesterday did a quick tour up Cheops...good choice for a tour when you want to hit the road and head home before noon. 2000vf up and back and a another great east facing aspect. Scrubby fir trees near the top make for some tight but entertaining terrain until you hit the slide paths on the lower half of the descent.

We were up there for 3 days as well. Saturday skied Bonney Trees and the lower part of the glacier. Experienced conditions much like you described. People at the Ranger Station said the area was probably "skied out". We only saw one other parties tracks???  Generally there was about 10" on new snow on a firm base.

Both Sunday and Monday we went up Connaught Creek to Balu Pass. Each day we did a run on the Hourglass, an 1100' ft north facing slope that still had reasonably light powder.  Probably the best line was climbing the west shoulder of Cheops to about 7700' then dropping into a NNW facing bowl for a 2000' run.

Did you guys head up Cheop right at the swimming pool behind the lodge? I might have seen your group going into the woods as we were going over to the Balu Pass TH?

Russ,

Opted to head to Mazama based on a positive report.  Sorry I missed you guys.  Heading to the pass on Thursday  with Mike C. and I appreciate the info.  Skiing here has been great.  6 inches last night.  Temps in the low 20's.  Very Vague and extremely obtuse trip report to follow......

Gregg

Cool - I'll be waiting to look for clues...

Here's a ski pic that doesn't do the place justice (this is taken btw. the peak of youngs and the asulkan hut:


Thanks for the reports, Pete and Ema.  I find that I get a lot more pictures if I back the URL off to:

http://rouppacquisitions.com/ipw-web/gallery/rogerspass2

Good stuff.  BTW, Pete, after the last several weeks at Baker I gotta ask, what is it like to ski when you can actually see the surface of the snow??

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february-13-16-2004-rogers-pass
Pete A
2004-02-17 02:43:50