After yesterdays “better than expected” snow at Observation Peak we decided to give Fairview Mountain a shot. I had seen some IG stories from the summer trail and it looked pretty good for ski coverage. Only one way to find out, so Chris and Jesse met me at the parking lot at 8am and we started heading up.
The summer trail made access to the alpine very easy, it has been packed down all the way to the pass. From the pass we trended far climber’s left to see if there was anything more filled in then the rocky looking standard route. There wasn’t, so we headed back climber’s right until linking up with the upper east face where we found it fairly filled in all the way to the summit.
After a short break at the top we skied down the upper east face before skiing the standard route down the south-east aspect. Strangely enough the snow was good, there are rocks but for the most part you could tell where they were. We trended skier’s left to ski down below the pass where we found good turns for some time, even at treeline. Now don’t get me wrong, we hit the odd rock here and there and we were skiing carefully for the most part, but it fell into the “better than expected” category for all of us.
From here we followed the summer trail out, which was probably the most difficult part of the day due to the trench hikers have packed down. The lower half was kind of icy and you never knew when a random hiker would show up, but in the end we were able to ski all the way back to the parking lot without issue.
Cold day, -24C at the parking lot to start and -12C to end. Sunny & no wind. There are wind slabs developing over an ice crust in the alpine on solar slopes, nothing to be concerned about currently but that will change with more snow. Rocks are still a plenty but when skiing slow and turn-for-turn it didn’t seem to be much of an issue.
Skiing the upper east face. Shot by Anna Elkins taken from town.