Skiing Mt Joffre, the Iphone edition.
A month ago a Facebook group chat with good friends from the Rockies sparked up the idea of skiing one of the Kananaskis giants, Mt Joffre. I guess that's the modern day equivalent of sitting at a pub scheming up the next grand adventure. The plan was to start hiking Tuesday morning, set up camp, summit and return to the trailhead Wednesday. We decided to play the whole thing by ear based on the weather and when the time came we had just the right weather window with a storm inbound shortly after our projected summit time. We decided to go for it. I made my meals Monday morning, dehydrated them while I was at work, came home and packed everything in less than 2 hours. I left Revelstoke at 21:00 and arrived in Kananaskis at 0200 local time. I took a quick nap in the truck before the rest of the group showed up at 0800.
The plan was to blow past the Aster Lake campsite and set a high camp at the toe of the Magin glacier. However, at the trailhead, we were greeted by many signs saying that random camping is PROHIBITED and guilt slowly started to sink in. A quick group chat and almost 3 hours later we had our permits for Aster Lake, 11:30 and we were finally on route.
We took the Hidden Lake shortcut which has suffered a lot of deadfall and made for some pretty awful bushwhacking with heavy packs and skis.
Bushwhack
Exposed snow crossing
Still smiling 
We followed the regular trail from Hidden Lake to Aster and the route description can be found here. It took us nearly 8 hours to reach Aster. Maybe it was the heavy pack, the bushwhack, route finding woes or could have been a general underestimation of our goal and overconfidence in our fitness but we were demoralized and exhausted by the time we made it Aster. At camp, another party returned from Joffre and informed us that it took 12 hours return from Aster camp. Needless to say, that did not lift our spirits. We decided that we wanted to be back at the trailhead at 21:00 at the latest the following day, meaning we had to set off at camp by 0400 summit and return to camp by 14:00 to pack up and slog down to the car by 21:00
A 0300 alarm woke us up and preparations for the day were underway. We were a team of 4 and by 0400 only two of us were sitting about the jet boil. The other half of our team decided that due to their physical condition a summit push wasn't feasible. Micheal and I set off at 0445 already 45 minutes behind.
That morning we scaled down our goal. We were hoping to get a good look at Joffre with a strict turnaround time of 11:30. With clear skies, we had a great overnight freeze and travel on refrozen snow was very quick. We rounded the corner of Aster Lake and finally got a glimpse of Joffre and just as we thought, it was really far.
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Hi Joffre, so far.
Eventually, we reached the delta, traded shoes for ski boots and crampons and headed up to the Magin glacier. Gaining the glacier was straightforward and we had a clear shot at Joffre. 0900 we finally took the skis off our packs and skinned to the bottom of the face, which was way steeper than it looked from across the glacier. 10:15, Micheal and I have been skiing together for years and while no words were actually exchanged the decision to summit regardless of our time restrictions had been made. We had perfect conditions for a quick ascent. The refreeze was holding and we kicked our way to the summit 3450m by 11:20. Somehow we made it on budget. Once at the top we realized that we had to ski the steep north face of Joffre on boilerplate refreeze. Yikes...a fall on the descent would mean a slide all the way down the Magin glacier, not ideal. We picked our way down the face and at about 2800m we hit perfect corn and enjoyed 1200m of great skiing all the way to the delta. 13:30 we arrived at Aster camp, remember that storm? The storm arrived in full force while we were dismantling the camp and delivered rain and wind. 14:30, we started our descent and after what was the worst hike of my life we made to the trailhead at 20:45. Right on time.
Spot the climber coming out of the delta
Steep
Joffre and surrounding area is a must see for anyone who loves the mountains. Joffre itself is a fantastic ski descent but if I were to do it again, ( I won't ) it would be best to budget three days or leave the extra gear and go for the one day push. Incredible experience, looking forward to my next 11000ner!