Author: John McMechan
A pleasant surprise on Elma and Brooks
As usual, we met at the Vancouver Mountain Centre bushy, tailed, and bright eyed ready to go. Glen, Jeremy, EJ and myself.
Our expectations have been a bit low with a number of storms forecasted, and the prediction of imminent rain to wash away the snow gains. We showed up and we were pleasantly surprised with 10-15 cm of storm snow. Conditions were con-mod-mod and weren’t interested in anything to radical. Washy reported 50cm at 1000m and 125cm at 1400m. A small year
With Jeremy’s experience skiing around the Strathcona trails and a frozen battleship lake, we made short work of the approach to the N.E. Ridge of Mount Elma.
Spirits were high while Snow depths were sad but at least doable as we worked our way in and around through the forest up the slopes
We were able to keep generally out of avalanche terrain on our way up and managed to piece together some skin tracks. Once we reached around 1300 m elevation they’ve started to be a significant amount of snow to make for a good trail breaking across the flat plateau of Mt Elma.
With wind and snow whipping in our faces we hid behind some wonderful mature sun alpine trees for a bite.
We went on our way and skied down into the col between Alma and Brooks.
This was the highlight of the day from my perspective, as we were surprised with quite light powder from the previous snowfall and from the storm with15-20cm ski penetration and a very reasonable slope angle.
We took turns breaking trail, making our way towards the south Ridge of Brooks
As we were right on schedule and the weather was improving. We agreed to make our way up, and we picked up a line at minimize any avi risk working in our way evading the steep slopes.
Before we knew it, we were at the summit of Brooks and we gave each other a nice summit hi-five.
There’s a number of rolls and steps off the summit, and we made our way down as the sun made an appearance and we could even see across Mount Washington. It was beautiful.
We intentionally cut a convex slope to see how it was, and it sloughed off a small size one which reinforced our decision-making to avoid the steepest slope and stick to the forest in muscle our way out with survival skiing until we were lower into the Brooks Glades
The Brooks Glades didn’t have as much powder as we hoped, but they were quite an enjoyable ski .
At about 1250 m and below it was getting a bit thin and we made our way back to the base for a full eight hours day
We had a great time with a keen group
But it looks like more is coming in the upcoming days…..yippie!!