Storelk Mountain, ski trip #1 of 2022 season

November 21, 2021

Getting eager to see snow this season, Andy and I headed out to Highwood Pass before they close the gate for the year. The Highwood Pass is the highest paved road in Canada (2,206 mt) 7,238ft. Every year the road is close due to winter conditions. We have ski there before, but this was my first time up Storelk Mountain ! Storelk Mountain is a 2,865mt summit beautiful rock formation with a big wall on the right.

Parking on the highway, near the drainage we had to bushwhack for a about 40min-1hr, cross a creek and pretty much go up all the time.

The creek was ok to cross and no water at sight. The snow pack was probably around 80cm deep and at points it was even deeper (not bad for November since we haven't had enough precipitation this year).

Once out of the trees, we started to climb on the right close to the ridge, always going up to gain around 400mts of elevation to the top of the ridge where we ski down.

It was very windy today, at times more than 70kms wind gust, we felt like if we were in a sand blasting machine with the snow hitting our faces ! crazy views, but transition to ski mode had to be quick.

The first run out of four on that side was a cautious one, testing the snow stability and watching for reactions. Nothing noticeable and we decided to climb up again.

We did a second run and felt better, the wind had almost covered our tracks already, both tracks up and down!! The third time we decided to ski almost all the way down, after the first section I lost visibility of Andy into the drainage (next time I have to ski closer to him). At the bottom we had a bite to eat in the trees and decided to go up again for a forth run !

Frozen mouse if you can see it :-)

Climbing up from there took us 40min, this time at the top we saw a lot of avalanche debris coming down with the wind, with the sun hitting we decided it was time to leave. It was an awesome run to the bottom, and we decided to go up the other ridge right in front, steeper ridge where we had to bootpacked to the top, our skins were wet and weren't sticking, super challenging go up this way, they wanted to come off the skis. The descend was amazing this time, lots of snow and trees. The least fun part was coming (bushwhack to the car), we managed our way down in the trees without skins, only had to put them on the last 300mts.