April 15, 2014, K Country, Mt. Chester

Managed to recharge on sleep so we could start on time to do some of the more interesting lines around. After finding minimal powder around Lake Louise we went to Mt. Chester to see if we couldn't find some decent ski pen in K country. The HS at treeline based on the almost buried trail signs appeared to be around 1.5m. As we started booting up the coulior on Mt. Chester light snow started to fall. A group of three had skied the line a few days before us but it appeared that some light snow had fallen since they skied it. Boot pen ranged from shin deep to only the toe of the boot in the middle choke. About halfway up a decent sized sluff came down the main gut. There was some discussion about turning around but the snow briefly cleared so we continued on our boot pack out of the main gut. At 2/3 of the way up more convective snow showers came in and kicked up the wind which sent another sluff down the chute which would have been capable of knocking a person over. At this point we called it and skied down. Once completing our transition the sky cleared up substantially. We were all bummed at not making it to the top but the decision was good as we could not see incoming showers from within the chute. The ski down was of fairly high quality with minimal sluffing.

It looked as though there might be a similar line up the valley so we proceeded in search of a chute that was more sheltered and less exposed to spin drifts. We found such a line. The line is about 500m up the valley from the Mt. Chester chute hiding behind a large ridge of rock. It is extremely sheltered except for the bottom and the very top. The boot pen was knee deep and the snow was light. There was a beautiful wind feature spine for the middle 1/4 of the chute that allowed for very fun skiing and easy sluff management.