Alexis has been itching to tick Steep and Darkside Peaks off his list. I’d been in the area during summer, doing the Darkside–Windfall–Steep loop, but I’d always been curious about skiing it. So when Alexis invited me, hesitation was not in my vocabulary ; rain, weather forecast doom, or not.
We left Vancouver in what felt like a tropical monsoon. The forecast was about as optimistic as a cat at a dog show, but I kept telling myself, “We got this.” Miraculously, the rain stopped once we hit Duffey Road, and blue sky teased us through the clouds like a bad Tinder date.
We started skinning right from the highway, following some old tracks to a lake. The route began on the North ridge, intersected with the West ridge of Darkside Peak, then looped all the way around to Steep Peak. Along the way, there was some good ol’ boot packing and tricky down climbing on a ridge that was basically one giant cornice party. If it had been Halloween, those cornices would have definitely been the spookiest decorations.
Reaching Steep Peak, we were greeted by a classic whiteout, because apparently, the mountain wanted to keep us guessing. With visibility worse than my decision-making skills before coffee, we debated our descent. After some trial and error, we skied part of the West ridge before dropping into the North bowl, which happily led us to the clearcut summer parking lot.
The final stretch was ski-out on a logging road back to the highway. The North aspect delivered some sweet blower powder skiing ,a solid reward for surviving the corniced ridge and the weather roulette. Oh, and just to keep things interesting, about 10-15 cm of windslab released during the traverse, because who doesn’t love a little avalanche surprise on the side?
All in all, a wild, wet, and wonderfully windy day with Alexis, mission mostly accomplished, sanity mostly intact!
No comments:
Post a Comment