Just got back from another long day on Copper Mountain, this time with Kieran Crimeen.
Today the objective was the south bowl from the south sub peak. We skinned up Redearth Creek Trail starting at 8am for about 8km before trying to work the access drainage that leads to Copper Bowl but the snow levels were too low. We decided to bootpack the forest ridge on the climber’s right which worked out for a while but we decided to drop back to the drainage as it got steeper and full of deadfall. We were able to skin up the drainage the rest of the way on thin but mostly acceptable snow levels, luckily the creek is frozen too. We started to work back towards the ridge line and found some good open pockets for skinning before reaching the treeline. The alpine ridge leading to the south sub peak was fairly easy compared to what was behind us and we found ourselves at the top by 3pm. We were able to ski the top 400m of vertical before the snow became a little too thin for turns, another 100m and we were back bootpacking downhill to avoid completely destroying our skis. The next 500m of vertical we followed the avalanche path down and back to the trail over snow covered boulders, super fun! We got back to the trail by 5pm and skinned back to the parking lot by 7pm in the dark.
Today started and ended cold but mid day was very warm, above 0C as we reached the alpine. The snow below treeline was heavily effected by the temps and sun today but in the alpine the snow was mostly still dry. Access and snow levels in general are way too thin on this side of Copper right now. If you wanted to ski the Copper Bowl area it would be best to head up the Twin Lakes trail that we did on Saturday, that summer trail isn’t as nice at Redearth Creek but less kms and more direct to the area with good skiing/snow.
