Every year, round about the May long
weekend, the Hurley Road, a dirt road that runs over Railroad Pass
from the Pemberton Valley to Bralorne and Gold Bridge is plowed out
after a long winter of snow cover. Some years, there are metres of
snow to plow, some years less, and some years, opening is delayed due
to avalanche hazard.
Walking the freshly plowed Hurley Road
2019 was a lower snow year, so the
Hurley Road was plowed out a couple of days before the long weekend.
I desperately wanted two more ski days before calling the season
done. All I could remember of our 2019 ski trips was an endless
round of sunny days, mountain tops, smoothly covered glaciers, and
long corn snow descents. I had completely forgotten the difficult
bushy approaches, the frozen dirt covered snow under trees, hiking
through dense forest with skis on my back, and long climbs with lots
of elevation gain.
Although the Hurley Road was plowed,
the last several kilometres over Railroad Pass required 4 wheel drive
or at least decent tires, neither of which our #van had. We ended up
parked about a kilometre below the pass, which, given all the other
walking with skis, we had done was super easy.
Semaphore Lakes
Once we had climbed over the snow
banks, we found a decent snow bridge across Railroad Creek (which
drains Semaphore Lakes) and roughly followed the summer route up to
Semaphore Lakes. It was easy travel, surprisingly easy. Continuous
snow, fairly reasonable angle, not too icy. It was going to be a
good day.
From L to R, Locomotive, Tender, Caboose,
Face from Sempahore Lakes
From Semaphore Lakes we followed a
ridge to the east of Donnelly Creek, avoiding as much as possible
getting under cornices which were obviously failing. There are all
sorts of terrain choices here, we chose the easiest safest route
which always seems a good default position.
Avoiding cornice falls
Up on the ridge near Locomotive
Mountain, we had lunch on bare rocks and watched a group of three
descend a steep colouir off the east face of Locomotive. Then, it
was a relatively easy ski, with a few steep switchbacks up to the
summit. Doug had been here before, when we skied the Hurley River
horseshoe route, but I had been sick and had waited at camp.
Skiing up to Locomotive Mountain
Of course, I had a grand plan of doing
a big circuit skiing up all the peaks around the Train Glacier,
culminating with Face Mountain, which is a 140 metres higher than
Locomotive, but time had moved along much faster than we had.
We skied down into the col between
Locomotive and Tender Mountains with the idea of skiing up Tender
Mountain but the snow was so mushy on the ascent route that it did
not seem all that safe. Besides, which we were starting to tire. We
had a great corn snow descent from the Locomotive-Tender col to the
flats below, then a long slowly rising traverse took us back to our
lunch spot.
Face on the right, Faceless on the left from Locomotive
Doug is a good ski route finder and he
managed to finagle a route whereby we kept our skins off and our
heels locked all the way down to Railroad Creek with minimal
shuffling along flats.
Ski skating on descent
Next day we once again walked up the
road towards the pass, but this time we headed east from the pass up
steep treed slopes that lead to Grouty Ridge. Now, it is entirely
possible we picked a very bad spot to head up the ridge, but looking
at Grouty Ridge from Locomotive Mountain the day before, I am not
sure anywhere is that good.
Having fun on the route to Grouty Ridge
The slope up to the ridge is really
steep and studded with small bluffs and cliff bands. You need to
ascend from about 4,200 feet to 6,000 feet before the terrain
flattens out on Grouty Ridge. I walked, carrying my skis on my pack,
Doug skied, mostly. There are unavoidable sections where you need to
take skis off and kick steps up steep slopes through trees and
bluffs.
Skiing along Grouty Ridge
Eventually, we both reached the ridge
near a couple of small tarns. What a relief, although I was dreading
getting down. It's almost unbelievable but I have skied up this
ridge before, back when we attempted the Tenquille-Owl traverse and I
broke a ski in half.
Skiing along the ridge was really
pleasant. You could go right along the ridge crest with some ups and
downs or do as we did which was follow benches and old snowcat roads
along the west side of the ridge. There was one problem with skiing
up Grouty Peak, however, and that was it had no snow.
Lunch time views
We skinned up the ridge to a point
about 3 kilometres south of Grouty Peak and decided that was far
enough. Back in the day, I would have been gunning for the peak, but
older age and a weaker body has changed my philosophy and I am now
just out to enjoy the day and journey, tagging peaks is nice but not
necessary any more for me to consider the day/journey a success.
Grey skies over Grouty Ridge
The weather was not bluebird clear,
with low cloud and scattered showers hanging about, but the scenery
was fine and it was good to look out over the mountains that we had
done many previous trips along.
When it came time to descend, Doug
again managed to string together enough descending that we made it
back to where we gained the ridge without skins. The descent started
well enough, we thought that veering skiers left a little would take
us around a troublesome bluff we ran into on the way up. It didn't.
Veering left took us right to the top of the bluff where traversing
in either direction to get around the bluff was difficult if not a
bit dangerous.
Looking over the Locomotive Group
As it started to spit rain, we had to
take our skis off and kick steps back up the steep slope we had
descended to traverse to skiers right (north). Once we found a
likely spot to descend, we put our skis back on and started skiing
down. I had to take my skis off one more time at a particularly
steep descent, but otherwise, we slowly picked our way down and the
terrain gradually got easier and easier and we could see the Hurley
Road. I made a mental note never to ski up Grouty Ridge again.
Twice is enough, three times would be tempting disaster.
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