March 26-31, 2012, Stanley Mitchell

Fourteen miles is a big number for me even if I know the skiing will be great.  It is just hard to think about seven or eight hours of slogging, most of it on a road, with your ski tips for distraction.  But at the end of seven and one half hours the hut finally came into view, and it was a grand sight.  It is in a spectacular valley with a great tour on every point of the compass.  Our first day of skiing was overcast with intermittent snow showers all day long, while the visibility was poor, the skiing was great.  We were feeling like small fish in a large ocean, so we kept it very conservative,  skiing down using our up track for brackets, we made two laps on the President snowfield/glacier and had a great day.  It is such a treat to have the hut waiting at the end of the day for hot soup, and good conversation around the fire.  There was a guided party sharing the hut with us and they were a great bunch, pitching in with all the chores.  There were 10 of us, and it made for very spacious living in a hut that sleeps 22.  Day two we made for Kiwetinok pass, with the idea of having an easy day, but as we started up into the steeper terrain, we traveled over snow that had been eroded and thinned by the wind and we began to be able to plunge our ski poles to the grip, followed by settling so we tucked tail and beat a hasty retreat.  We contented ourselves with a trip toward Emerald pass and found more stable conditions, and great skiing.    BC had been suffering from the same February warming crust we have been dealing with here in the N.W. as well as a significant hoar layer at the ground,  we had been advised by everyone we met to take an extra conservative approach, we took that advice to hart.  The weather for the entire trip was primarily, stormy, with two to ten inches of snow falling  every day, this added to our worry of instability, and prevented us from seeing what might be lurking in the higher environs.   We had the good fortune to have, two guides from CMH on a buss mans holiday join us, and they reinforced  our worries  about the stability.  Even with these concerns, we were able to have great skiing every day, as the snow got deeper the slope angle was backed off.  The trip out is somewhat more palatable, but it is still 14 miles even if it is down hill.  One of the CMH guides left at first light and did us the service of breaking trail, and the accumulation of new snow made some of the steeper descents through the trees much more pleasant.   By the time we were back at the trail head it was almost rain, and we were just as happy to see the car as we were to see the hut.