I love skiing Cobra Couloir and when Kevin Hjertass told me they skied it in powder conditions I knew it was on the short list for the day. Cobra Couloir is found on the north aspect of Temple in Paradise Valley far to the looker’s right. It is less steep than Aemmers but has much larger walls. It should be considered a Rockies classic but is often over shadowed by having Aemmers so close by.

Nick and Brad showed up in Lake Louise just after 8am, it was almost -30C out and the idea of travelling in the shade all day wasn’t great but skiing Cobra top to bottom in powder was. So off we went, into one of the coldest valleys in the Bow Range.

Brad heading up into the feature.

The trail up to the fan was set and fast and we followed the easy bootpack up into the feature before we lost it. The top section took a while as we were cold, tired and the snow deep. Near the top we started finding ice under the snow, often you can’t ski the top section as it is just bare ice, luckily there was just enough snow to start at the top.

The snow was excellent and the sluff was easy to manage. We leap frogged down through the upper chokes before having at the main section and fan. There was a supportive crust in the boulder area above the lake and we were able to ski all the way out to the last bridge on the trail without issue. After catching about 2 minutes of sun at the bridge we set off down the trail and back to the parking area. Just under 8 hours car to car with basically no breaks, (too cold!).

Nick coming at me in perfect snow.

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