Mt Heather Epic -SOAP BOX COMP

Just finished up an epic ski to Heather Mountain in the Dogtooth range. No snowmobiles, just long slogging suffering. Epic, as in it was 13hrs of skins on ski touring.

The night previous we were scratching our heads on what to do. We had been out around Kicking Horse, and the amount of temp affected snow was really concerning for ski quality. We couldn’t find anything N facing in the Pass that was at a reasonably high elevation, yet not massive moraines or glacier. So we decided to go for a mountain I’ve wanted to hit for a while.  I knew would be an awful slog, with a pretty nutty approach for self-propelled fools. However, the logging roads take you to a pretty good elevation, and most aspects you’d be skiing were northerly, and hopefully less affected by the mild temperatures. So screw it, I was gonna have to ski it sooner or later to cross it off my list, why not now while everything else is super warm and goopy?

The route, uptrack following logging roads and the furthest left path, descent further right and in ravines

Got to the “trailhead” (the gravel depot just west of Quartz) at 6:30am and did a short walk across the highway to the logging road. Then it was time to slog. My skis worked fine in the sodden snow from yesterday’s rains. Luke’s and Dan’s, not so much. Luke had massive balling and Dan a bit of balling, both with tons of topsheet snow hanging on. Luke was pretty much using the heaviest snowshoes ever over the entire logging road approach until we got into the valley and drier snow. Dan and I decided there was nothing  we could do and left him to find his own pace. I found the first legit good snow on a NW aspect at 1650m, with some pillows so I went for a short skin and ride while Luke caught up.

Dude, where's my supportive crust!!?

Now we're getting somewhere

Pow pillows, Dan snapped a second early. I'm about to launch this sucka to a 10-15ft drop. I'm pretty much pro…

At 10:30, after ten km of logging road we went into the ravine that leads to Heather Mountain. Once in the ravine we worked our way up toward the alpine meadows at the base of Heather. Once in the small valley, snow quality became amazing, just beautiful powder with relatively good stability. Darted back and forth on either side of the ravine to avoid the avy path runouts that climb the walls on the opposite side of the ravine. As I came around one corner, I saw a good 5 or 10 ski tracks all together and I was really disappointed; sledders could get into the ravine! That would mean most of Heather would be highmarked all to hell. As I got up further though, I saw the tracks all heading toward some flags for heli pickup and breathed a sigh of relief. Just some rich gapers here yesterday to ski some trees, nothing to worry about.

Finally off logging road and past the powder line (rainline is a depressing word)

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Typical Dogtooth range alpine. Not today, I think

The resort is sometimes better than these tracks crowded all together

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As we reached the base of the mountain, the storm picked up and started dumping harder, and the wind came in strong too. About 3cm of fresh, cold snow on the all aspects at the base of the mountain at this point. We decided to head up toward the col and then hopefully up the East face to get the peak. Once on the moraines, visibility decreased drastically. We went up to the col, thinking we were at least going to get close and see if a summit was feasible in such weather. It paid off, and we could see the ridge splitting the E and NE faces well enough to climb it. Snow was windpressed, very supportive and no close layers that we could crack. So up we went, summiting at 4pm. After some high fives and pictures, it was time to go, as we had one more alpine descent to do on the way out before it got too dark.  We skied the NE face with 30-40cm ski pen on a grippy crust. Good fun, but nothing like the quality in the valley.

The peak is up in the soup somewhere. This is the uber gnar ~30* NE face

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We stuck close to the rock band on the left and then along the top of it in a figure '7', then across to the right after it flattens out on top

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The ants go marching one by one. Try to pick out the blue jacket, did I mention it was wiindy?

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Beyond the sign is the way gnarlier W face dropping into Beaver Valley and Glacier park. Part of a WPA as far as I know

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Luke skis some pow on the NE face

Then it was time to go up again and over a ridge to our exit valley. We were all running on empty, totally beat and trying to get up as fast as possible to get reasonable light for a safe descent out of the alpine. Once on the ridge, we got changed over quickly and were happy with what we felt and cut above a bench. So at 6pm we dropped in to incredible light snow, 60ish cm ski pen and no bottom. The stoke helped to get offset our totally beat mental and physical states. But there was no time to waste, time was wasting and although we were out of the alpine and not going to have a large accident from dark, there was still good tree skiing below us that would require light to ski instead of back down the road all the way.

Not kind light for shooting. We descended the large lookers right pointing chute on the right

The ravine was mostly too benchy to have fun, we needed to traverse slopes covered with way too much pow (15cm of fresh on this side!) in order to keep our momentum up. But near the end of it, there was an avy path that feeded into it really well. It looks as though it had ripped 2-3 days ago, 300m of vert. But now there was fresh pow in the runout most of the way to the logging road, and it skied sweet. No pics, too much fun. Plus, not a good place to stop with the weather raging and temps changing rapidly. Then we went down the logging road a bit to the next valley’s drainage ravine, and dropped into manky but still fun snow to the next road intersection. Then down the neverending road back to civilization.

Luke gets faceshots in the ravine

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My favourite tractor trailer ever marking the highway. 7:30pm 13 hours of ski

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Overall, it was an amazing success, routefinding went perfectly despite the visibility and mostly treed in approaches. We got the mountain we wanted, safely despite a raging storm, and we were able to do our second descent safely with a thick, light blanket of top shelf snow instead of skinning back out of our entrance valley and riding only logging to the car. A snowmobile would be a huge asset, you could cut off 2 hours and more importantly a whole ton of effort and trailbreaking, and spend that instead on the one or two other good descents you can do after the one we did for our second descent. It took us 13 hours to do 25km (not including switchbacks) and 1900m. If we had globstopper or dry snow down low, we could easily knock off two hours.

Pumped for the resort tomorrow!