I have never carried a pack so heavy in my life. Ever. We hiked for about 5 km up a series of logging roads to the snowline where we gratefully traded our hiking boots for skis and began touring. Stash number three.
The easy-breezy goings of the drive and canoe trip were over, and there was no doubt about how hard we were working by the end of the day. I think we spent about 12 hours traveling in total in our excursion to the alpine.
Luckily we were expecting a long day, but I don’t think anything can ever prepare you for an endless bush slog. The alpine was a truly gorgeous sight when we got up above treeline. After making it to the nearby pass, be brewed up some much needed juice and both knocked back an entire liter of crystal light. The day wasn’t over...
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| Bewin up some juice! |
If I recall correctly, we reached the pass after about 8.5 hours, which meant that by the time we got going there was at least another 3 hours of slogging to do. We did get some skiing done though!
It was a short trip down to treeline again to negotiate a big buttress, and then we slogged up out of the alpine valley to a beautiful camp. It was a really impressive sight. We nestled in, surrounded by sun-drenched peaks, and every couple of minutes we’d hear another avalanche breaking loose and flowing down the mountainside. It was so nice to finally be in the snow, with a dug-out kitchen and a proper tent pad and the like. We slept the shit out of the tent that night.
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| Our first alpine camp |
The next day was our battle to the Clemenceau icefield. Gaining elevation like crazy now we were in the alpine, we quickly got to the headwall of Cummins glacier… A really steep snow climb proved to take quite a bit of time due to the warm conditions and the lack of a good overnight freeze, but the sight was incredible once we were atop.
A short romp down the Cummins glacier got us exactly where we needed to be, and we made it to camp on the Tusk glacier by 2:00; plenty of time to construct a fortress of a camp with windwalls and a block stripmine.
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| Glacier Camp |
It’s a good job we spent so much time setting up, because we turned out spending about two and a half days in camp. We waited. We watched the barometer perform its deception on us. We waited some more. By the time the clag cleared out it was too late to climb anything, so we renovated our fortress… New entrance, new kitchen counters, heightened and reinforced walls. The palace would stand up to a hurricane, and the stripmine was getting really huge.
Spending time in the block pit was like playing one of those farm games online… We would make new production runs with better quality materials as we got lower down in the snowpack. John would fill me in on the production op as I kept on the construction: “Hey Yuri, there’s a new expansion project on the go here… We’re gonna have a bunch more product for you real soon.”
“Good, cause the last run was shit!”
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| The Stripmine |
And so on. We woke in the morning the next day to the sound of snow on the tent walls. “This weather is souring my milk!” says John as we clamber out of the tent in the morning. He had a similar experience on a ski traverse of the Premier range last spring.
It became apparent to me that we had not allotted enough time for skiing our objectives. It would take a full two days to get back to the canoe, and we weren’t sure if the weather was going to continue. Either way, the stability wasn’t great, with new snow, and the lack of a good freeze overnight.
John wanted to get some whiteout photos to show everyone at work, so we went and practiced our cord-slingin crevasse-findin western approach to whiteout navigation… Then we mixed some drinks.
It looked like the white out might clear long enough for us to escape the clag valley, so we packed up everything except the tent, and sat in our ski boots on our full packs pondering movie titles that started with the letter that the last one ended with. Turns out there are a lot of movies that end in S, E, and N.
It was a tasteful way to kill a few hours, and eventually it got super hot in the tent: “I think I feel a change in the weather,” I said. Sure enough, there was a clear view to our exit.
The decision was made at 1530hrs to move out. By 1542 we were in transit. It was a whirlwind of activity, and I don’t think either of us regretted the decision as we turned our backs to our fortress in the middle of the glacier…
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