This past weekend was one for the books. Checking the avalanche forecast on Friday, the hazard was Moderate, Low, Low the text at the top read "Fantastic skiing [...] have fun out there.". We set our sights on some bigger lines, and had an absolute ball.
The trip was officially a UAOC hostel trip, we had the Castle Mountain Hostel all to ourselves. I got down there later on Friday night and the group was already getting along well. Robert worked out the carpools for Saturday while I enjoyed the sweet hostel; that thing really is nice! Saturday morning we made the short drive over to the "Paint Pots" parking lot and then followed the well broken skin track to the Vermilion Peak slide path. The skin track was pretty steep, and in some places, idiotically placed. Even so, we made it up to just below the ridge before turning around and skiing the path. On the way up we were treated to a spectacular inversion which allowed us to climb above the clouds for a while.
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| Lukas and Petr skinning up through the clouds. The burned terrain makes for an interesting skin up. |
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| Petr breaks out above the clouds. |
The higher we climbed, the more the sun beat down on us. Eventually we were sweating while wearing only our lightest layers. At the top, we sat down for a quick lunch and both Rob and I got some tanning in. A short skin up for some extra turns, and I clicked into my skis shirtless for my first ever bare-chested ski run.
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| Lukas at the top of our run on Vermilion Peak. |
The skiing was pretty good, although the path had been skied quite a bit. There were still plenty of powdery spaces though, which produced creamy turns in the sun. The view was fantastic and the atmosphere more than made up for having to cross tracks.
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| Lukas finds some soft stuff below the small cliff band... |
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| ...and jibs one of the many boulders lying around. Just awesome! |
Once we hit the bottom, a short skin brought us back to the car. The weather had cleared and we got an awesome view of the peak and another slide path which, facing more North, could produce some more consistent and less sun affected snow. Back at the hostel we unwound with a beer and planned to hit the Crowfoot Glades / Bow Lake area on Sunday.
Sunday morning we quickly helped the hut manager Tony clean up and then drove up Highway 93N to the Crowfoot lookout. Although there were already tracks in the main fan off of Crowfoot peak, we could see lots of potential for other runs. Working our way up the skintrack, we were impressed with the hazardous area we were in. In any more unstable conditions, I would never place myself in that shooting gallery. The stability was amazing though; a pit dug at about 2300 m showed no layers in the top meter and a constant density gradient from soft powder down to pencil. We skied two runs on the main slope and then traversed over climber's left to sample an untracked slope.
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| Lukas again, here shredding the main fan. |
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| Our last run of the weekend, my tracks are far right and Lukas' are next to the left. |
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| The crowds came in as we got to the car. Not sure their attraction to that area, it was mostly tracked out. |
Overall it was a great weekend. The group that came out to the hostel made it real easy on me and Rob as leaders, and everybody got along just great. The hostel is really well equipped and quite cozy. I think everybody enjoyed themselves and I can bet that there'll be another Castle trip next year.
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