Mount Joffre and Marlborough, Ski trip #15 of 2022 season

May 01, 2022

Epic adventure to summit Mount Jofree in Peter Lougheed. The highest peak in that area. After some prep and commitment from Andy, Stefan and Mark we left Calgary at 4:00am with the plan to spend 2 day out in the mountains... if conditions were favorable on Saturday we would try to summit that day, otherwise we would still have Sunday as an option. Big pack preparation during the week to make sure we had all we needed.

My guess is around 40lbs backpack for 2 days

We crossed the Upper Lake right through the middle to save some time, that took us close to an hour to cross a 4kms section.

Upper Lake

Once with the lake behind us, we climbed up to Hidden Lake, a bit of trail and bushwhacking, but nothing crazy..

After Hidden Lake the climb gets steeper to Aster Lake (which was our camping target since there was water and wood)

Water refill at Aster Lake

We left the tents, food and other gear at Aster Lake and with a good weather ahead of us decided to go after Joffre.

Stefan with Warrior Mountain in front of him

Andy and Mark

Northover Mountain in the back on the left

We can see that Mount Joffre in front of us, and the weather still good. Up until now the sun has been out, but it won't be long until the clouds start to roll in..

First look at Mount Joffre

View from Mangin Glacier

Approaching Mount Joffre, we can see the route

Once at the bottom of Joffre we started following skin tracks from yesterday's group..

Stefan wasn't feeling well and really had to make an effort to keep going. Mark was in front and I was following, Andy and Stefan were just a few minutes behind.

Weather starting to turn.. time to boot pack

Mark and I decided it was time to switch to boot crampons for the last stretch, took us probably an hour boot packing.

Boot crampons time !

North Face of Joffre, still climbing..

Mark almost at the summit

The visibility was bad, and we could barely see the summit, but knew where to go and kept going, two guys were following our tracks and left their skis behind and boot pack to the top.

We can now see the summit at about 50mts

Mount Joffre summit, April 30th 2022

With poor visibility we didn't spend much time at the summit, chat a bit, took some pictures and put the skis on !! game on now, skiing down with poor visibility was going to be a challenge, it wasn't as bad as there was a lot of snow covering the ice band, but we made it slow.

Nice break after a long day...

Back in Aster Lake we started to set up camp

Andy's tent with a wooden stove was nice to hang out and cook

Mark and I shared a tent

The worse part of the night wasn't that is was -7c, but getting out twice to pee twice... I had to put my ski boots on, get out and then back again.. not fun at all !! In the middle of the night I felt the tent on my face and realized that it was collapsing with all the snow we were getting.. out again to shovel and fix up the tent !

Inside Andy's tent with the wood stove on

We couldn't start day 2 without food, I brought bacon and eggs for all four of us !

Day 2 was going up to Marlborough Mountain

Marlborough Mountain ski run !! Great snow

Marlborough Mountain, you can see our ski tracks

Time to pack and go... We packed our tents, got some water and started the three hours ski trip back to the car... There were some steep sections and with the heavy backpack it was really tricky and hard. Once at the lake it was another hour to cross it, the temperature was around +7c and the lake was really melting out, no need for skins at this point :--)