write-up by Becky:
About an hour north of Whistler, BC lies a backcountry
skiers paradise referred to as The Duffey, so named for Duffey Lake. It’s a
stretch of Highway 99 between Pemberton and Lillooet that is flanked on either
side by steep, glaciated peaks and endless powder. Pete and I got to spend six
days exploring this Shangri la.
Day 1 – Oh look. It’s
raining.
We drove out of Seattle at 6:30 am under intermittently
rainy skies. We made good time to Bellingham, but had to make a few stops along
the way for things like kerosene and a busted iPhone cord. After the requisite
stop at Tim Horton’s for lunch and donuts, we pulled into the rain-soaked parking
area for Cerise Creek at 1pm. Our destination, Keith’s Hut, is a rustic backcountry hut
constructed by friends and family in memory of Keith Flavelle who died in a
climbing accident in the 80’s. It is entirely supported by donations and a VERY
popular destination. We opted to go here for Tues/Wed/Thurs nights in an effort
to avoid the crowds and it worked out well! We arrived at the hut after 2.25
hours of skinning through rain and then increasingly driving snow to find only
two other people there for the night. Marcela, from Argentina, and her
boyfriend Steve, from London, were on a multi-month skiing and climbing trip
through the US and Canada in a big touring van they picked up in Florida. They
made great hut-mates! We were pretty soaked after our hike in so we laid our
gear out to dry and started planning what to ski the next day.
Day 2 – Oh look.
That’s a foot of new snow!
We awoke to clearing skies and a foot of powder. Sweetness.
One of the great things about Keith’s Hut is that as soon as you walk out the
door you can start climbing so you really get down to business straight away. The
other great thing is that so much of the terrain is north facing it’s hard to
go wrong. We left the hut with Steve and Marcela and climbed up the moraine
towards the Anniversary glacier. We opted to take the northwest facing side of
the moraine while Steve and Marcela took the northeast facing side. We bounced
and giggled our way down through 1800 ft of soft, dry powder. This place was
fun. We climbed back up the moraine for another lap, but this time followed
Steve and Marcela’s tracks down the other side. The sun had taken a bit of a
toll on the snow, but it was still deep and powdery. We found a skin track
climbing up to a col on the east side of Mt. Matier and went up for a look
around. We were rewarded with fantastic views and dramatic light shining on the
Twin One Glacier, Mt. Howard and Snowspider Mountain. Back down more
north-facing powder to another skin track climbing up the east side of the
basin. These west-facing slopes had been rather cooked by the sun at that point
so the snow was heavy and a little crusty, but still fun skiing! It was 5pm by
that point and we were getting a little tired so we called it a day and headed
back to the hut where we found several newcomers including an awesome family
from Squamish comprising two wool-hatted, hippy tele skier parents and their
jibbing teenage sons who built a kicker in back of the hut and proceeded to
land backflip after backflip. So great.
Day 3 – Time to head
for the bigger stuff.
The first day of touring was a bit of a pub crawl so we
could get a feel for the place and try out the snow on different aspects. This
day was a bit more objective-oriented. One of the classic skis in the area is
the Anniversary glacier. Looking straight on is intimidating because it looks
impossibly steep, but when you get up on it, you realize that’s just the
effects of foreshortening and it’s really not that bad. We started the day with
another 1800 ft lap off the moraine as we had the day before, this time skiing
with Steve and Marcela. The clouds were coming and going so we wanted to give
them some time to burn off before heading for the high alpine. On the next lap,
Marcela took her poor fatigued legs and blistered feet back to the hut while
Steve, Pete and I headed for the col at the top of the Anniversary glacier. We
had very good visibility the whole way up and got some nice views across to
Matier and Slalok. The ski down was on mostly great snow, though it had been
slightly affected by the sun and wind from the previous day. This run affords
you 2500 uninterrupted feet of skiing straight down. Needless to say our quads
were on fire by the time we got to the bottom. We thought we’d call it a day
after that, but Steve is very persuasive and enthusiastic and convinced us to
go back up the moraine for a look at a steep little couloir that a couple guys
had skied the day before. Looking down into it, I rubbed my tired legs and said
no way, but Steve dropped in and reported that it wasn’t nearly as steep as it
looked. So we went for it and are so glad we did! It was a fantastic little
shot followed by more wide open rolling terrain that deposited us 300 grueling
feet below the hut. We dug deep for that climb back up.
Day 4 – I can haz
cheezburger?
Our original plan had been to ski to the car on day 4,
collect more food and then ski up the other side of the road to another hut for
three nights. Our overly-ambitious tours around Keith’s Hut (and concerns about
the weather and snow conditions in the other hut’s basin) left us feeling tired
and calorie-deprived and in need of the Wifi’s so instead, we bee-lined it for
Pemberton, found a hotel, got into our street clothes and went to the Mile One
restaurant for soul-soothing hamburger. I think they make their own buns. So.
Good. We spent the rest of the day relaxing in the hotel hot tub, and being couch potatoes.
Day 5 – Back at it!
Feeling refreshed (and with only a daypack to carry now), we
headed back up Highway 99 to check out the skiing on Mt. Chief Pascall. This
north facing mountain rises 3000 feet up from the highway. We got to the ridge
top and decided to run a few laps on the top 1000 feet to take advantage of the
best snow. On each subsequent lap we noticed that the quality of the snow at
the bottom of our run was increasingly heavy. It was obviously warming so after
the next climb, we headed to the east side of Mt. Chief Pascall to ski a
massive slide path called Equinox back down to the road. In good conditions,
this run would be awesome. In heavy, tracked out and slightly crusty
conditions, it was challenging to say the least. To add insult to injury, the
run deposits you on a logging road 1.5 flat miles from your car so we got to do
some sweet cross country skiing at the end of our day. After that it was back
to the Pemberton Valley Lodge for more hot-tubbing and vegetating.
Day 6 – A private hut
for me? Why yes, thank you!
Sunday we drove back up Highway 99 with our overnight packs
reloaded with our sleeping bags and pads, camp stove, more food and kerosene
for the heater. We were headed for the Wendy Thompson Hut, operated by the
Alpine Club of Canada. We were still concerned about what the snow would be
like since much of the terrain around it is south facing, but we’d gotten some
new snow so we took our chances that the crust may have been covered. It’s
about a three hour skin up the valley to the hut. We passed six skiers on their
way out and they reported no one else up there. We arrived and sure enough had the
entire place to ourselves. The weather was intermittently snowy and blowy with
poor visibility so we hopped in some existing skin tracks to explore the little
hills immediately surrounding the hut. We found very decent, though touchy snow
so we kept it conservative and just did three little laplettes. We spent the
evening playing cards by candlelight.
Day 7 – Right, so
THERE are the bluebird conditions.
We awoke to perfectly sunny and windless conditions. Of
course. Because it was time to go home. We headed out at 7:30 to get in some
skiing and hopefully some views before we had to pack up. We found another nice
little northeast facing powder stash and then climbed in to upper Marriott
Basin in order to get views out to the south and west. The climb up was kind of
sketchy, traversing under warming cornices, but nothing broke off and we were
again rewarded with amazing views across to Joffre, Matier and Cayoosh. Many of
our sentences at this point started with “Next time…” We were clearly hooked
and would need to come back. We took one more run back to the hut and packed up
our stuff. A much-quicker-than-expected slide out had us back to the car by
12:30 with visions of more Mile One cheeseburgers dancing in our heads. But oh,
the horror! They’re closed on Mondays!!! We settled for some perfectly tasty
paninis, great coffee and amazing vegan chocolate cake at The Mount Currie
Coffee Company before hitting the road home. As usual, the drive back down the
Sea-to-Sky highway was gorgeous and distracting, especially on this bluebird
day.
