For the last week I had heard of lots of steep skiing going down in the Bow Range and finally decided to get on something myself. After a short group chat Nick, Taylor, Scotty and I decided to head up to Bell Couloir, which is found hidden away at the back of Taylor Lake. The SkiUphill crew had gone up it the day before so the idea of a set track was nice too.
After meeting at the parking lot we all started up the trail. Soon I realized that my last 6 straight days of skiing had caught up to me and knew tomorrow would be a rest day. The boys raced up to the lake but I don’t think I was too far behind and after regrouping we crossed the lake along the shoreline and found ourselves at the short waterfall headwall. After some tricky skinning up the waterfall we followed the skin track to the top of the moraines and the start of Bell Couloir.
The skin track and boot pack was no longer visible but it didn’t matter, the snow was firm and the staircase was great for the slower in the group. After topping out we were gifted with great views and clear skies for our switch over. We skied the upper section one at a time and regrouped at the big roll in where I setup to take some photos from the skier’s right flank. The group then skied one at a time through the roll and we all regrouped at the top of the fan. At this point the skiing wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t great either, mostly hardpack with enough randomness to keep you guessing a little. The snow in the lower fan was much better, easy long turns all the way to the moraine where we found even better snow. After crossing the lake we skied the summer trail all the way down to the parking lot, the trail is in excellent condition for skiing right now!
