Friday, February 12, 2016

Discovering the Rossland range backcountry potential

We left Nelson to head a bit south towards Rossland. This village is for me a mini version of Nelson, so I have always liked to spend a bit of time there.
With a bit of fresh snow on the forecast we figured it would be a nice move.
We used the information from Backcountry Skiing Canada and headed towards Mt Kirkup.
The visibility was poor so we stayed low and skied through some openings in the forest.
I haven’t heard much about the backcountry possibilities around Red Mtn Resort, but I was pleased with what we found. The runs were not long though, but lapping it was nice and fun!
As we were driving to the Nancy Green pass to tour on a mellow terrain, we spotted a car parked next to a clear cut and a skintrack leaving from it.
We followed it and eventually ended up on Mt Pewman.
We had again a nice day skiing, but battery failure shortens the documentation of the day!

Having to leave soon, we made our way back towards Revelstoke.
Since we have bought lift tickets in pre-sale in November, we didn’t wanted to leave without having using them!

The Germans not that interested in paying to ski a non-powder-chocked-resort, we splitted. They left us at the public pool and after chilling there for a little while, we walked to a friend’s place a few blocks away where we crashed after making a gigantic nachos!

After lapping inbounds on the groomers for a few runs, we headed to the North Bowl were the conditions were much better!
It hasn’t snow much, but the wind had piled the snow in some nice and deep pockets!

We returned back to the resort, but headed to the slackcountry looking for some more freshies. The south boundary of the resort gives a great access to some nice slackcountry option. After skinning for about 20 minutes and gaining around 50m of elevation, you enter a nice open bowl. At the bottom of the bowl, there is a cat-track that you can follow all the way back to the resort.
We lapped it twice before giving the resort a few more runs.
Then we rushed down, hitch-hike back in town, grab a lift to the bus station with my friend’s roommate and catch the Greyhound back to Calgary.
That was the end of a great trip punctuated with less snow that I’m used in British Columbia, but it was also nice to be able to really see the areas that I’ve visited so often without being able to have a look at them!

Now back in Quebec where I’ll be skiing a bit less this winter due to the past year where I was busy not working!

Having moved from Montreal to the Saguenay area, I’m quite optimistic about some great weekend warrior skiing!

evans

1 comment:

Luc said...

Votre blog me fais capoter! Félicitation vous êtes uns inspiration pour moi!