First big mission of the year, Ursus Minor Southeast couloir

With low snow we were scrambling for ideas to keep us busy on a day to day basis. Consistent temperatures in the first few weeks of December stabilized snowpack, but we were haunted by the rain crust left earlier which persisted to high elevations (1800-2000m). Cold icy conditions in the valley left us scrambling for elevation.

In comes the VOCO boys. I have always had a lot of respect for the crew of great outdoorsmen/women which go to UBCO. Many of them are well studied in both the formally taught as well as the physically learned elements of the mountains. And some of em know how to ski pretty damn well too. Jordan Harrington, Andrew (Blondie) Loeppky, and Bill (Knightrous) Knight were to be my guides for the day.

Over a few text messages, myself taking a couple hours scouring google earth and backcountry forums, and sitting down with route books we decided on a mission that would make the most of the great stability while getting us high enough above the icy valley bottoms. It was going to have to be a fairly big day...

We started at 7:30AM at the Rogers Pass Summit parking lot, and started climbing up Balu Pass. We went ~6km up the valley approach, and then started our ascent up Ursus Minor, crossing a couple of bowls and bushwacking through a few treed areas. All of us had explored this drainage before and skiied this part of the pass many times before, so we knew pretty much exactly where we were going with our day. You can see our route as follows, with the red being the ascent and the green being the descent:

Climbing the fields and trees was beautiful, the snow below 1800m was quite crusty but
proved to get softer and softer as we ascended, eventually becoming blower up higher.

Crossing the upper snowfields.




The saddle in sight, with the scramble in the distance.

We all know this feeling. Reaching the end of our tour after having climbed over 1400m, and slowly nearing the saddle, and eventually our final elevation of ~2800m.



Starting the summit scramble after gearing up at the top saddle. This shit was kinda scary. Scrambling in ski boots is never comfortable, and between slab traverses, howling ridge winds, and a rotten base of facets didn't make it any more comfortable. None the less the summit push seems to always be when the motivation is at a maximum when the end goal is in sight.







Finishing the top scramble and climbing the ridge.



After gearing up in the sheltered pocket on the north side of the ridge we skied down to the couli we had spent all day getting up to.




The view of the couloir we were about to ski. We climbed up on the left side of this image, and walked/skied the ridge to drop in on the SE couloir on the right. This is the only image that does our scramble up the south ridge justice. For scale imagine the little guy in the foreground shrunk and placed up on the rocky faces on the left (there was more snow around the shoulder where we climbed).

And finally the descent! (Blogger wont let me display a Vimeo video so you will have to follow the link)

http://vimeo.com/115035516


Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed, more adventures coming soon!

PHOTOS COURTESY OF: Andrew Loeppky and Jordan Harrington