Great Bear - Coquihalla April 1, 2009

Another Coquihalla gem out of John's guidebook.  We parked just N of the Great Bear snowshed which has the advantage of having a changing room and pickled sausage aperetifs. 



We skinned up and past Ottomite, to Iago then did a few runs down beautifully light and fluffy snow on Iago - 300m runs on a NE slope from 1800 m to 1500 m and the pow is still good on the Coquihalla.




We then switched over to Great Bear and found that the S and SE facing slopes were sun-affected.  Thankfully our main ski down was beautiful light snow on NE slopes again.  First you take a direct route down the fall-line while traversing slightly to the right and you hit the ridge with the old bomb-tram.  Then we dove down the fall-line to about 1300m through mature beautifully spaced old-growth timber.





From there it gets significantly steeper.   With the snow starting to get heavy, we decided to skin back up and over Ottomite and out.  Classic snow on open faces culminating with exhilirating tree-skiing.