SkiSickness

Brunswick is the majestic Queen of the North Shore range. Standing at 1780 m (5800 ft.), it towers above all else on the North Shore.

*okay, enough with the dramatic intro. We got really messed up with scale on this mountain by thinking a lot of the features were a lot larger than they actually were.*

After a failed plan in the stupid hours of the morning (I forgot my skins at home), we regrouped and napped a bit and came up with a fairly decent back up plan... once we drove back to get my skins. Maddy and I headed for the Deeks lake trail head and started our day off with a hike from sea level. We encountered snow around 850m (ish) and got rid of the anchors on our backs. The snow depth quickly increased to impressive. At Deeks Lake we got this view of Brunswick



We skinned across the lake and up a series of creek gullies and smaller lakes and eventually came upon this view... how do we get up there (the gulley is protected by a smaller cliff band)



We went up the ridge on the left



At some point weather rolled in again... shocker



But we made it up the top with minimal difficulty. Those glide cracks sure are deep!



Maddy didn't like the steepness combined with unsavoury conditions on the north face, so she went down the south face a bit and skirted around to a couloir she had seen that wasn't quite as steep (but had just as crappy of snow). I stepped into my skis and out onto the face. It was steep... and crusty. This is me standing up doing my best to keep my balance: if I leaned in even the slightest, I lost my edge; and if I leaned out... needless to say I got a bit of vertigo.



I did 4 or 5 turns on the steep face. The first two went smoothly, then on the third one I hit a thinner section of crust and I broke through. This abrupt transition kicked me back and I had visions of tumbling down into the trees and over the cliffs below, but somehow I kept it togethor. The next couple turns were tense. I side stepped through a narrow section between a tree and some ice and then enjoyed mellower turns on the spine below



Maddy "enjoys" the snow on the lower part of the face



We traversed a bit and skied down the gully feature, which actually had half decent "corn"







We skied down to Middle Lake and made some coffee, basking in the isotropic heat. And then the clouds parted and the face was in sun for a full 30 minutes... not the best timing. What we skied



We skied back down to snowline and hiked out. It was a pretty good day, all things considering. "Baby Gnar" as I've heard it referred to before.

That's a special summit to ski. Too bad you couldn't get the ultraclassic "skiing into the Howe Sound" shots.

I don't know if we could have gotten any shots of Howe Sound from there. The North Face drops into a bowl and the ridge is pretty high. But this weather just reaffirmed your statement from last week...

The snow looks so nice from far away, shame it wasn't so smooth to ski. But that just adds to more adrenaline which is also exciting. Cool baby gnar mountain.

I forgot about that one, I've been wanting to ski it. Looks like you got the full North Shore steep ski experience. Whiteout, bullet proof ice and probably a Grouse grind style hike in the thick tree canopy.