March 30-April 1, Spearhead Traverse

From reading the other TR, looks like lots of TAY'ers are getting up to Whistler and enjoying the Spearhead lately :)

Mike, Andy, Ema, and I drove up Friday morning. We had watched the weather forecast slowly degrade all week, and weren't too optimistic that we'd actually get clear weather on Saturday, but we all decided to stick with our plan and give it a go. 

Friday afternoon we took the lifts up and skinned out towards Decker in poor viz and occasional snow showers. We camped that night on the ridge between the Decker and Trorey glaciers.   With steady snow showers, gusty winds, and bad visibility we figured that it was likely we'd be packing it up and heading back for Blackcomb in the morning.

Saturday morning we woke up and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We couldn't believe how the weather had turned around overnight.    We broke camp and kept going on the traverse.  All the glaciers are well covered and the snow conditions made for fast travel although it was a bit crustier than what the March 26/27 crews had.

We skied down to the Russet Hut around 6pm, clouds had begun to roll in and the wind was howling at the hut.  Fortunately the nine folks already staying at the tiny hut made room for the four of us so we didn't have to tent it that night.  Thanks again for sharing the hut with us!

This morning the high alpine was pretty socked in and there were snow flurries. We skinned across the Musical Bumps heading for Whistler.  As we climbed up Flute we were enveloped in a complete whiteout which got me wondering how we were going to notice the cornices on Flute bowl before just skinning off the top of tem...and then we all got a good laugh when the weather cleared for a minute and we could see the Whistler boundary fence about a hundred yards straight ahead. (I'm still not happy about Whistler's expansion into the Flute bowl area, but their big boundary fence was a bit of a welcome sight)

A fast ski down through Whistler on legs of jello brough us to Zog's hot dog stand and large bowls of poutine, yum!