Home > Trip Reports > March 13-20, 2010, Kokanee Glacier cabin, BC

March 13-20, 2010, Kokanee Glacier cabin, BC

3/13/10
Canada BC
2213
6
Posted by Jim_Clement on 3/22/10 1:30am
10 of us joined an ACC sponsored guided trip to the Kokanee glacier cabin north of Nelson last week. 5 or 6 buried hoar frost layers over the last month and a meter of fresh snow the day before we arrived continued the sketchy avy conditions and unfortunately kept us out of the high alpine. We kicked off a size 2 slide on our only attempt to get up to the Kokanee glacier moraines and retreated to lower treed runs and shorter north facing drainages, including Smuggler's, Happy Valley, Mt. Gregrich, skier's summit of John Carter, and Enterprise knob and the drainage NW of the knob. Great skiing but we had to leave untouched an incredible amount of fabulous looking high alpine runs. You couldn't begin to ski a fraction of the possible terrain in a week, even with stable snow.

The "hut" is BC Park's flagship backcountry cabin, generously financed by contributions to a fund honoring the local avalanche death of Michel Trudeau a decade ago. It has hot and cold running water, real flush toilets, elecrticity supplied by microhydro, propane heat, an indoor refirgerator(!), even satellite access. Great facility. A few photos below, more at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13618023@N06/sets/72157623665238904/show/
Thanks for the report -- we're heading up there in mid-April.  Hopefully things will have started to stabilize by then.

Damn - that slide on the moraine is sobering.  It's a nothing convexity below tree line.  That's touchy snow

Looks like a really nice trip Clem. Glad you were able to avoid any serious trouble with those touchy surface hoar layers. Hopefully things will settle down.

author=LeeL link=topic=16094.msg67123#msg67123 date=1269276956]
Damn - that slide on the moraine is sobering.  It's a nothing convexity below tree line.  That's touchy snow


Ditto that.  Glad you guys got some good, safe runs in.  That block in front makes me think that's firm slab...

Great terrain, great cabin.  If you want to go back and get to that Alpine terrain under better snowpack conditions, let me know!!

Thanks for jogging my memories!

Nice TR and photos.  A very sobering set of photos of the avy.

We are in Revelstoke and just read the avy report and the word "touchy" was used in the discussion of conditions. 

Reply to this TR

7259
march-13-20-2010-kokanee-glacier-cabin-bc
Jim_Clement
2010-03-22 08:30:03