Today Daniel Thomson (Story of a Ski Tour) and I headed out to get a few shots for the upcoming film about making the map found in the book.
We drove to Bow Summit but the parking area is closed for heavy machinery so we headed back to Noseeum Creek. I got a good report from Paul John Sumpton and Anne Rozek about them skiing there yesterday so figured it was worth trying it out. The approach has low snow but is skinable. I slightly improved the route set by the previous party and now it shouldn’t be much of an issue getting in and out, (it looked like they walked sections yesterday). Most of the early chutes are too thin for skiing and many have avalanched to small size 1. The largest chute at the very back looked the most filled in but we decided to try a smaller, steeper chute just before it. I found 30cm of powder snow over the ice crust which sat on or very near the ground. The ice crust was less defined than what I found at Bow Summit and seemed to have bonded to the upper snow pack in most places. Again I wouldn’t go as far as to call it “go to go” or bomber but it also wasn’t that bad. I skied the slope and found pockets of breakable ice crust in the mid pack but over all the skiing was pretty good. We packed up and skied down the fan to the creek on thin snow cover but what was there was fairly supportive and fun to ski. The route out wasn’t as fun or easy as it is when there is better coverage but again not too bad all things considered. We put our skins back on for the second half of the exit as there are several atypical work around thin areas to deal with.
Snowing all day and both the snowfall and wind picked up in early afternoon. There were periods when the sun tried to come out but it was unsuccessful where we were.