Skiing Loki - The window has closed
Having already climbed Loki three times in the last decade I have never really had any interest to climb it again, however the prospect of skiing it—well that's a different story.
The views from atop Loki are stunning the and mountain itself is something straight out of the European Alps. It dominates the skyline as you drive north along Kootenay Lake on the way to Kaslo and also as you ride the Ferry over across Kootenay Lake to Crawford Bay. The summit of Mount Loki sits at 2,779m/9,117’ and provides 40° fall line skiing for a few thousand feet. Since Mount Loki faces South the spring skiing window is limited. Given our 3+ meter snow pack this winter we’d hoped that there would still be plenty of snow to ski even though April had been unprecedentedly warm.
We made camp high up on Portman Creek FSR in the hopes of an early start so that we could be on top of Loki well before the forecasted mid day sun started to cook the south face and make things unstable. Quickly after out 6:00am start we were surprised to find no snow on the trail, only an excessive number of downed trees in our way. The forest soon gave way to patchy snow and by the time we had our first glimpse of the Portman Notch at around 2,000m we had skis under foot and were happy to see it snowing steadily instead of raining as we ascended.
The trail to Portman Notch was far worse than what you see below most of the way, with downed trees impeding our progress frequently.
As we climbed, the valley cloud built up and there was not a ray of sunshine to be found anywhere. Good for snow conditions, but not idea for navigation and views.
As we topped out on Portman’s Notch we were enveloped in thick cloud but luckily previous experience guided us somewhat confidently onward. As we approached the ridge leading to the summit we were surprised to see up to 5cm of new snow covering a thick melt freeze crust of new snow. Skinning proved to be challenging so boot packing was how we spent most of the time putting elevation behind us.
It was a different story on the summit ridge where we encountered bare rock—not a good sign of things to follow.
The thick fog was relentless but brief windows enabled us to see Loki’s summit where there was more rock than snow. We decided to forego the summit and instead ski what we could find under the false summit where coverage buoyed our confidence. While conditions were still not ideal, we decided to make the best of it and ski what we could.
The top 5cm of snow quickly peeled away as we skied and left us with a firm and supportive crust on which to try and make or turns look some what elegant. I don’t think we succeeded.
The snow, which was peppered with glide cracks quickly ran out and gave way to rock scrambling and cliffs to negotiate.
After a few tense moments we circled around and under a large cliff to skin back up to the ridge and collect one member of our group who did not ski down with us. As luck would have it the cloud started to burn off and we were rewarded with summit and lake views.
After retracing our steps back to the trail head we’d covered 15km over the nine and a half hours of walking, skinning and scrambling. With 1,213m of elevation gain we were glad to be back at the cars and able to change out of our wet ski gear. While Loki and the day's weather was not what we’d hoped for, it did provide for some good adventure and confirmation that we were easily a few weeks late in in the season in order to accomplish what we’d hoped for.
For all the stats and info on this trip check out the Backcountry Skiing Canada Garmin Connect web site powered by the Garmin Fenix3 GPS watch which just happened to win our Gear of the Year Award.
