At 0730h Pat and I started skiing up the creek that heads towards Mt. Hector. There was a slight breeze accompanied with some light snow. This wasn’t expected since the forecast was only calling for sun and clouds. We were trying to be optimists and hoped that it would clear up to a sunny sky soon enough. We were quite hopeful that the conditions were going to be good since the avalanche conditions had been quite good and steady lately. After ascending over 800m the weather didn’t improve and the winds were actually getting strong and the snow didn’t stop coming down. There had probably been about 5cm of new snow overnight and the wind transport onto avalanche prone slopes was beginning to be a concern. On top of that, visibility was limited and we couldn’t see further than halfway up Mt. Hector. We didn’t expect this kind of weather. With the odds not looking good we decided to call it a day and headed back.
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| Pat putting on an extra layer of clothes. |
Our total outing lasted 3h15. It took us 2h30 to ascend 855m which brought us near the toe of Hector Glacier. That means we reached 2700m before turning around. Our descent back to the van took us 45min. It was an easy descent with most of it being a nice ski run all the way down on variable snow. The snow was surprisingly shallow in some areas considering that we’ve been having quite a good snow year.
I guess we’ll have to come back some other time when the conditions are better. This ski mountaineering tour is quite interesting and I can only imagine what the views would look like on a blue bird day.
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| Our turn around point. |
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| What we could see of Mt. Hector. |
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