June 24, 2018, Artist Point - Ptarmigan ridge ish

We decided to take advantage of the opportunity to get a little boost on the way out toward Coleman Pinnacle given courtesy of DOT's having opened the road to Artist Point this weekend. We were able to stay on snow the whole way (though 2 of our party of 3 chose to cross a small strip of dirt and rock on the summer trail on our return rather than brave a sketchy looking steep sided snow isthmus at one point), and though it was more of a "hike on skis" due to a heavy horizontal component to our path of travel, we did find some fun turns on a few slopes. Despite a variety of flavors of bumps on the snow surface, we skied slopes with soft but fast snow that made for very fun carved turns!! There was yellow pollen as well as black dirt or pollen on most of the snow but none of us had pollen glop up our ski bases. We only saw one other party out beyond the zone immediately around Table Mountain - a party of two hikers returning from just short of Coleman Pinnacle.

We made our end point a spot along the ridge with nice prominence just a bit short of Coleman Pinnacle, and with a nice long-ish run below it. As we prepared to drop into that run, we spotted a herd of maybe 20+ animals traversing from Lasiaocarpa ridge over to just below Coleman Pinnacle (where they disappeared in a fold beneath the pinnacle, likely following it up to near the top). We guessed goats, but for a brief moment early in the scene we wondered if perhaps it was a horde of Mounties on a group ski outing giving how quickly they were moving.

There seemed to be a handful of folks marking up the main line blueberry chute, some using car assist for the return trips, and a big crowd practicing crevasse rescue on the huge vertical wall of snow bordering the Artist Point parking lot (including one guy sharing the auditory pleasure of drones with all the recreationalists and picnickers and whatnot).


There's still a ton of snow up there but a lot of classic route options are quickly closing out at least for continuous skiing due to areas melting down to dry land.