Lost Ledge to Rossiter

A quick decision was made to do a ski traverse from the Lost Ledge cabin (near the headwaters of Schroeder Creek) to Hwy 31a via a pass near Mt Schroeder and Rossiter Creek. Accordingly, a half-dozen enthusiasts gathered at the cabin on Wednesday facing weather forecasts of frigid temperatures to come. This time, the forecasters were right. Thursday morning at 2000 m, dawn came with clear skies and a temperature of -25C.

Departure was delayed briefly to allow the sun more time to do it's job and to wait for 2 additional group members to arrive. They had the early start, leaving town well before 6 am to drop off a vehicle and make the ride and ski up to the cabin in the dark and the cold.

Just before 8:30 am, we started, with the run down through the forest to Schroeder Creek. Skins went on the skis, where they stayed until we reached the pass south of Mt Schroeder at 12:30 pm. We climbed through old-growth cedar and fir forest, across and up wide bowls and open slopes, where, despite the air temperature, the sun and the climbing kept us all quite warm.

The pass was cold, so other than removing the skins and admiring the view across to Rossiter Ridge and Mt Brennan, everyone soon started the descent to the valley bottom. The terrain leveled out there and what remained was a gentle descent along the creek alternating with, for me, somewhat hair-raising runs through West Kootenay woods. The road was reached at 3:45 pm where we all managed to cram into Webster's truck for the ride back to town, where it was still -10C. Photos of the trip can be found here.

Back from the Bend

After a nice hike and climb up into the sunshine at Zion, the clouds started arriving and the time had come to leave for home. Even on the I15 it took 5 hours to reach Salt Lake City, but 7 pm on a Sunday evening seemed like a good time to pass through a major city. That night, just a couple of hours north of SLC, was the last night above freezing that we were to have.

The next day, as we drove through the bottom of Idaho and into Montana, winter returned with temperatures we hadn't seen since leaving the prairies. We stopped for lunch in Dillon (I can recommend the hamburgers at Papa T's in town) and continued north to the I90, taking a short detour through Anaconda and stopping for the night at the rest area just east of Missoula.

Missoula was a bit warmer, being quite a bit lower in elevation, but there was a cold prairie breeze as we did our shopping. Skies were clear so we took Rte 200 northwest to Sandpoint, an excellent alternate route. Much of the route follows one of the branches of the Clark Fork and eventually ends up on the Ponderay River. It's very scenic, avoids the traffic on the I90 and doesn't have any elevation gain or loss, since it follows the river downstream. It was exactly 300 km from Missoula to Sandpoint by this route and even with the slower road, it took us only 4 hours.

A quick lunch and we were on to the Canadian border, crossing in record time. The agent didn't even bother looking at the list of purchases and receipts that I had organized. Unfortunately, we just missed the Kootenay Lake Ferry and had to wait another hour and a half for the next one. Another good time to have a camper, where we could keep warm, have a snack and lie around reading while waiting.

This time when we arrived home, we were able to drive into the driveway, barely. The snow was gone but in its place was about 2 inches of solid ice over everything. The desert of western Texas was starting to look pretty appealing!