Exciting Lines on the BC South Coast

This season was a tricky one. None of our ski descents were gimmies and a lot of the time we spent exploring new places ended up being a bust for actual skiing. Despite difficult conditions, weather, and timing, we still got some great skiing in!

Most of our time was spent exploring the Sea-to-Sky region around Squamish and Pemberton, BC. This area is rife with interesting and technical skiing that rarely gets visited. One of our first ski lines of the season was on the north side of Mt. Cook. This is pretty off the beaten path despite being within the Wedgemount Group, which gets quite a bit of attention! We had a big battle to get around the teetering cornice that guarded the entrance and then once we got in the line, visibility was difficult. Still a beautiful place on the back side of a popular area.

Our next visit into Wedgemount was for the more popular Parkhurst Couloir. This is a treat to ski right off the summit and finish down at Wedgemount Lake. The line isn't benign though, steep at the top and through the choke, it holds big panels of snow on the left side that present a serious avalanche hazard. We took our time descending even with the great snow!

On the other side of Garibaldi Provincial Park, Dalton Dome has a beautiful north face that is studded with seracs and a sneaky couloir down the middle. We climbed to the broad summit and then had a scare when a cornice broke away while I was scouting the entrance. Luckily I was on belay and didn't go for a ride. The cornice was a great slope test though and this gave us a good chance to ride the line in style!

As spring wore on, we headed to the Waddington Range for a little base camp trip. Here we found the land of humongous couloirs and gnarly glaciers. We had 8 days of storm and 2 days of skiing during the trip but luckily struck gold with big (1800m+) lines on those days skiing from the saddles below Asperity Mountain and Serra 2 Peak.

With the season wrapping up, I took one last trip down to the Washington Volcanos and got in a sneaky one-day ascent of Tahoma (Mt. Rainier) via it's very classic Fuhrer Finger route. We had perfect corn snow from top to bottom on what was surely my longest vertical descent ski line of the season.

That wraps up the 22/23 season and I can't wait to see what's in store for the next one!