Hot spring lines

• Posted on May 22, 2008 at 5:22 PM
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Me jumping a cornice on Alexandra, by Philip Stone.

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“Mount Adrian and Alexandra”

Planning a spring ski tour anywhere near a long weekend in B.C. is asking for a nasty turn in the weather. But we decided to test the weather gods, mostly because we didn’t realize it was a long weekend until we’d already set the dates for a tour up mounts Adrian and Alexandra on Vancouver Island. We got lucky. It was hot and sunny for the entire trip.

Of course hot has it’s own issues when it comes to ski touring. We overheated and our skin cooked in the sun. And there’s the ever present worry about avalanche danger. Again we got lucky; the spring cycle was over and the snow was stable but a little wet and slow.

We drove up a logging road high above Buttle Lake on the edge of Strathcona Provincial Park. It was the steepest logging road I’ve ever been on – they even paved a few sections because it was so steep. I can’t imagine what it was like to drive a fully loaded logging truck down. Scary.

Once we hit the snow we started skiing. The first day was about 10 kilometres and 400 metres elevation gain to a spot between both mountains. The next day we worked our way up the funky terrain of Mount Alexandra, including some 4th class scrambling near the summit in ski boots, and scored some sweet turns back down to camp.

The next day we skied right to the summit of Adrian and then skied an amazing natural half pipe all the way back down to our stuff. By the time we were back on the logging road we were shocked to see how much snow had melted in the three days we’d been gone. A trickle of a waterfall had turned into a soaker that sprayed a refreshing torrent across the logging road. It felt so good.

What adventures did you get up to on the long weekend? How did you keep cool?