By Anya Reid and Mike Hudson
May 23-25, 2025
This trip started as a trip to Washington State’s Mt Olympus: 60km and a lot of vertical and early mornings. However, the night before the trip I realized my passport was expired (glad I realized this now and not at the Coho customs office!). A quick change of plans switched our focus to the Island and we landed on Marble Meadows and McBride mission.
Paddle boarded across the lake with all our ski gear. The lake does not look rough in the pictures but it was quite windy and we had to fight to get across. Also, about a quarter of the way across Mike yells to me that he forgot ?? and I had the car keys so we both went back.
Was a relief to get to the other side fairly dry and with all our stuff intact. Stashed the boards, paddles and life jackets in the bush and then headed up the trail, which was really nice and dry. At this point it seemed crazy to have skis on our backs as it was warm and sunny. Just below the ridge the snow started and the trail got hard to follow. Put on skins and skis but had to do some bush skinning – better than post holing and bushwhacking. Once it flattened out up on top of the ridge we were transported back into winter.
Got dark once we were up in the meadows but GPS got us quite close to the hut and the roof was just sticking out so were able to find it pretty easily. Had some mice friends in the night trying to get into trouble.
Was a warm and sunny day as we made our way up to the ridge between McBride and Morrison Spire. Snow was very wet and slushy which added some excitement skinning up the steeper sections. Lots of potential routes and some good turns to be had on the way over to the ridge. We followed the obvious main bowl up to the top of the ridge. Provided some nice turns on the way down. Beautiful views from the ridge top.
Started having some major issues with skins not sticking. Thought it was the moisture but realized it was also some layer of pollen or algae on the surface of the snow that was potentially causing problems. Lots of skins off, skins on also likely didn’t help. By the
afternoon the only thing keeping the skins on the skis were straps. Very strange sensation to have skins completely disconnected to the skis.
Saw marmots in three separate locations.
Didn’t see a single other person the whole trip.
Although Olympus would have been cool, I was personally glad to not to have been waking up at 4am and not going to the US. Also Olympus would have been more vert and more kms, but I’m sure there would have been a lot more people.
