In my low mental state at 2am I thought crampons would be useless, so we left them at home. But by 4am ish, when we were chipping foot holds in the solid ice in the middle avalanche gully of Mount Currie I commented on how useful and time saving those sharp pointy things would have been. Oh well, we had to spice it up somehow. It was rather mentally draining being in an avalanche gully that gnarly for that long, even though it was at night and there was minimal wind.
But by 6am we were up and out of the gully, skinning upwards.
Now, our first objective had been the Y couloir, but there was some incredible BS on the old logging road to the lookers right avi gulley, and we kept losing the road. We eventually found our way into the middle gully and decided to just go up from there. I now know the proper route up, although it's still not direct to the Y-couloir.
So, since we were so far over from the Y Couloir, we decided to go ski the Pencil chute (or whatever it's called) instead. But then as we ascended higher we heard the helis starting up... our slow progress in the avalanche gully meant that we wouldn't beat the heli skiers up to the top, so it was time to figure something else out. We checked on Google maps satellite view and I saw a snow-band with a bit of sunshine on it. Hey wait a second, sunshine doesn't hit this face, it must be a couloir. SOLD, lets go there. (the bonus of being on a big face within cell range)
We were able to skin pretty far up the first section of it, then we started boot packing. At 2000m the couloir made a 90 degree right hand turn and we stopped for a snack. We rallied and made a final push up the couloir. It was steepest at the bottom and Rob broke trail up the hardest part. There was a strip of snow that was a bit denser that made the boot pack possible. If it was any fluffier, we'd have been tunneling our way to the top.
Rob tops out circa 2200m
We took in the view and transitioned. We were a bit below the sub-summit, but since it appeared to be warming up (sluffs coming off the cliffs), we decided against the scramble to the top, which was exposed to both a cornice and a couple thousand feet of cliff below it.
Rob enjoys pow off the top
Rob and the Pemberton Valley
The bottom had a nice pitch to it. oh how I've missed the steep and deep!
Maddy enjoying the pow on the bottom section
I got trigger happy and shot too early (no pun intended...)
Maddy enjoys 500m of pow before some BS
We followed some squiggle turns out. That route was much better. We also ran into a nice couple that had skinned up the route we were going down.
Zee route
Makes the bottom 2/3 of a Zed (or Zee). Would this be the route called Zorro's?
Beta (for all those wishing to ski Currie without a heli)
At the parking lot go lookers left, then take the first right, then go diagonally up from the bottom left of this picture:
