Back into the Backcountry

We've had a bit of respite recently from the cold weather and storms that rightfully belong in Saskatchewan or on the West Coast (just kidding, sort of...) so we've been heading into the backcountry. This does need to be done carefully because the avalanche hazard almost everywhere is pretty high. There's a lot of snow piled up on a very weak base. Keeping that in mind, we've gone to a couple of safe areas in the past week and had a bit of fun.

Last Sunday we got together with another two fellows to skidoo back into Lost Ledge. A local ski group has a cabin in there, miles back in the woods, and our job was to look at snow conditions and break a trail into where people leave their machines and take to their skis. The snow was deep and we even had trouble with the skidoos. Near the end of the trail, we were having to back up and take a run at it just to make headway in the deep, powdery stuff.

Today we took the skidoo about 14 km up the Cody Caves FSR to see if the snow was good higher up and to try and get above the fog that often lies in the Lake valley. You can see some of that fog in this picture which is looking south down Kootenay Lake. We didn't really get sun, except for a few minutes, but it was much brighter and fun to look down on all the foggy layers below us. Some of the peaks across the lake were visible poking through the layers of fog.

The skiing wasn't that bad either. There was a clearcut at the end of the Forest Service Road (FSR) that was less than a 30 degree slope, had enough snow to cover all the stumps and was long enough to provide some fun and a few turns on the way down. We skinned up and skiied down a few times, had lunch and eventually headed back down the hill.

We're probably going to be skiing at a commercial ski hill this weekend, but I hope to be back in the backcountry next week a couple of times.