Spent the last 3 days at Egypt Lake with Anna Elkins, Ally Watson, Josiane Simard, Beth Turcotte, Tristan Kimmerle, Fredrik Bengtsson and Dookie Dukes.
On Friday we skied into the shelter via Healy Pass. We started our run down to Pharaoh Creek at the larch laneways just south of the pass and headed down to The Sphinx. We found some open water in the area and one member of the group took a short swim. After following Pharaoh Creek we arrived at the shelter.
On Saturday our group skinned to Pharaoh Lake and then went back to ski the Shelter Trees. Half of the group then went back to the shelter while the rest did a second lap before heading back. After a lunch break 3 of us went for a tour around The Sphinx. We skinned to Egypt Lake then up to Scarab Lake through the waterfall area. We then went to Mummy Lake and finally ripped the skins after gaining Sphinx-Talc Pass. We skied the east aspect tree area on The Sphinx and followed Pharaoh Creek back to the shelter. While we were out a grumpy skier had arrived to inform everyone that there was “only 8 people booked tonight!” (there was 12 when we tried to book, hence why we were camping.) and then cranked the woodstove until the shelter was at 35C. Luckily I was camping so I got to miss out on most of the nonsense.
On Sunday we headed home (Anna and I were going to stay until Monday but she got a nasty blister on her arch). We skinned up to the start of the summit ridge of Healy 3 Peak and skied the benched terrain to the north of the summer trail. We then skinned up to the top of the climber’s right area of Healy Glades where we found some great snow and laneways to play in on the way back to the summer trail.
Friday/Saturday were mostly cloudy with light broken snowfall and very warm (even at night). Saturday night the temps dropped a bit and we had about 10cm of snow on our tent Sunday morning. The sky cleared up Sunday and we had excellent vis and snow in the alpine on our way home.
I saw a couple of very small storm slab natural releases while travelling on Sunday on the west aspect of Healy 3 Peak (these are very common to see after snowfall for this slope) but didn’t really see any other recent activity. On Saturday we almost skied Giza Couloir but decided not to after finding the temp crust about 1m down with facets above and below it. Another group skied the northern chutes of Unnamed Pharaoh Peak and one of the steeper lines on the east aspect of The Sphinx. On our way out we also saw tracks in the runout of The Big V (aka Killer Path), not sure if they skied from the top or not. Skied past 3 guys coming out of Wizards who said “it was great!”, but I didn’t stop to get details. Plenty of other parties in the Healy Pass area today skiing some more mellow slopes.
Coverage for the Egypt Lake area is about average for this time of year, some features are slightly above average it seems; Hall of Records, The Sphinx Couloir and Giza Couloir all look fat for mid-Jan. The trees skied very well considering the lower coverage (again pretty normal/good coverage for mid-Jan though).
