The guides picked me up at the lodge at a respectable 9AM on Thursday, Aug 22nd. We were going to use the ski lifts to bypass quite a bit of elevation so we needed them to be running.
By about 10AM we started skinning up towards the target summit. The pace was reasonable and I wasn’t feeling as out of shape as I thought I might. About 2.5 hours later we reached the col between the summit we were going for and a neighbouring one. The wind was absolutely howling here. Additionally, by this point we were essentially skinning over snow that had be blasted/melted into ice by a combination of wind and the warmth underneath. We removed our skis there and switched to crampons and ice axes. I was surprised by how much energy I had and the remainder of the climb to the summit went pretty quickly. It was actually much calmer on the summit than at the col so we took some time to take in the scenery and eat our lunches before heading down.
The ski down was quite varied. It initially started out as icy survival skiing alternating between patches of bumpy ice and bits of wind deposited snow. After awhile we hit a more sheltered area and the snow began to improve. The guides took me to a slope that hadn’t been skied since the deposit of snow the previous day. It started off fairly steep and then mellowed out a bit for a very enjoyable line. After that we were pretty much back in the resort and made our way down the normal runs for a beer to cap an awesome trek.
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