Trip Date: January 14, 2012
Participants: Seth Baker, Andrew Brown, Paul Cannin, Cameron Coatta, Pete Finch, James Haworth, Ilze Rupners, Monica Studner, Chloe Tergeman, Brittany Zenger, Ed Zenger, Geoff Zenger (organizer)
Difficulty: 3
Report: Dark and gloomy weather brought everyone together to Pemberton’s Mt. Currie Coffee Company (a fantastic spot to meet up) at 8am for the first of my two BCMC trips on the weekend of Jan 14/15, and despite some delays (a couple party members were circling the town of Mt. Currie, looking for a coffee shop), we managed to set out on the trip from our cars at around 9:20 am. The initial logging road stretch of the trip was ridden with alder and made for slow going, and when we reached the end of the road and started heading up through the trees, found that the surface was a nearly impenetrable ice that most of the party members without ski crampons had difficulty ascending.
Needless to say, the ascent up to treeline went much slower than expected, and after a short lunch break, we finally found ourselves in the alpine at about 1:30pm. By this point, a few party members were quite concerned about the difficulty of the ascent through the trees, and the majority of the group decided to turn around (a few of the strongest members pushed towards the summit, but didn’t make it all the way).
For the descent, we followed the route recommended by Baldwin, and we actually had phenomenal powder for the first few hundred metres, although there were a few short traverse sections that gave some trouble to our splitboarders. This route barely had enough snow to be feasible as it descends through a boulder field and without sufficient snow, it would be impassable. Following the left side of the creek down towards the valley, we managed to find the correct place to cross the creek in order to descend the final icy trees and hit the road that would take us back to our cars, but this was greatly assisted by having a GPS device with an accurate altitude reading. Without an accurate altitude reading, it would likely be difficult to find the right route back to the logging road.
The alder was just as bad on the descent as it was on the ascent, but we made it out to the duffey lake road, and hiked back down to our cars safely, with the last party members making it down at about 4:45 pm. In all, it was a decent day, if only for the great powder line heading down from our turnaround point, but I will be back someday to make the full ascent to the summit.
