Thread: TR: What's that you say? Kootenay blower on boilerplate?

Itching and scratching, best laid plans and all that, finally got some turns in. Drove over to Nelson, crashed at The Mighty Bighorns pad, awoke all rosy cheeked and somewhat bleary eyed at 4AM. Made our way to the Gibson Lake Parking lot by 5, road is still good though looks like precip is in the forecast. Get on it. Had a basic, and somewhat open objective to hit the Keyhole and down onto the Glacier.

Grays Peak is somewhere in that soup called early morning.



Bridges built for splitboards!



Terrain is filling in!



Pretty much the moment we left the Kokanee Lake trail it turned into a full on boot pack, crampons included. The 10-20cm of perfect, blower pow was sitting on impregnable crust.





Our objective was looking farther and farther away every step closer to it we took.



But there was some fantastic eye candy along the way! Perhaps a few more weeks and some of these will be rideable (though the road up may not be drivable....)





Same features but back in late August.



By this point we were getting a little tired of kicking steps. Neither one of us was enticed by the crux of the Keyhole, nor did we honestly feel all that amped to get up on the glacier proper with visibility being so variable. As well, the only routes out are the way you came up or a loop out that adds a bit of mileage to the trip. So we played it safe, and enjoyed what Ullr put down, crust included. Even managed to get a few face shots and nicely linked turns in.







All in all, a pretty solid day for the first turns of the season. 'Scuse me while I go to bed...

Solid work.

nice dude. wish I had the time now to go ski up there.

Way to get out there TWP...

oh my god I love Kokanee Glacier and those couloirs above Grays