Whoops, this draft has been sitting around collecting dust for nearly an entire year. (I’ll backdate it so anyone referring to it for beta doesn’t get confused by the time of year we skied the line.) It was a wonderful day skiing a route you won’t find much information about, so I think it’s still worth publishing.

For various reasons, spring 2023 didn’t line up all that well for me. I spent a month in Europe racing skimo and absolutely cracked myself pushing hard day after day. I got sick partway through the Pierra Menta stage race and came home in March to a spectacular weather and stability window that I just couldn’t take advantage of. But, as that window was drawing to a close, I got a few days in and started to get a feel for the snowpack. And what I was feeling was good. So Mark Smiley and I decided to line up something a little bigger: the striking couloir that bisects Bagheera Mountain’s formidable north face more or less from the summit.

Now, avid readers of Doug Sproul’s Rogers Pass guide might point out that the north face/couloir in the book does not go from the summit, nor does it particularly bisect the face. And they’d be right – we actually skied that one last year. It’s awesome. But when we did that, we got a good look at the other north face couloir – skied only once (that I know of) by Andrew McNab, Christina Lustenberger and Mark Hartley back in April of 2020. We were instantly smitten and knew we had to come back.

Back we were – at least, Mark and I; standing on the summit after, frankly, an unreasonably easy approach. We’d finally nailed the high traverse from the ridge above Balu Pass to the Cougar Valley and friends had put in a bootpack most of the way up the south face of Bagheera only the day before, so we were cruising. We quickly got to work setting up a belay so that I could tiptoe out to the edge and get a look at the skiing we were about to do. I thought I’d heard the the line referred to as “The Black Panther” but I can’t actually find that in writing anywhere. Regardless of the name, it looked pretty damn rad!

It actually took me a second to verify we were in the right spot, as the other side of the mountain fell away so sharply that my brain initially registered it as pure exposure. But nope, there was a couloir in there! First though, about 20m of what appeared to be free hanging rappel. I love skiing with Mark, because he’s incredibly skilled at anchor building (and every other mountain skill), and because he has a long standing public offer to pay for a second piece gear to back up rappels for people under 30. I’m still a couple of years away from aging out of that, so every time we rap I like to joke that I’m saving him admin time by just using his gear for the anchor up front. We whacked in a couple of great pieces and Mark disappeared over the edge of the cornice in hilarious fashion, cackling madly with his skis fully above his head before sliding into the abyss.

The line skis in stages. First, a tight, uniform couloir, which held glorious snow and felt pleasantly protected. Then an open face, which carries a double fall line in the standard Rogers Pass north face style above an indeterminate amount of exposure. Finally a second exit couloir to the skier’s right of the face. We traded pitches all the way down and enjoyed excellent skiing the entire way – though we were pretty wary of windslabs on the face.

Some bonus spice ensued at the top of the exit couloir, where we were forced to dry ski down a small slab. Mark went first and, running out of footholds, just sort of slid down the thing and plopped into the soft snow below. I learned from his experience and just hurled myself in from a different point. A small snice choke necessitated a second rappel at the bottom of the exit couloir, then it was perfect powder cruising down, down, down through the long moraines into Ursus Creek. Yeehaw!

I love the silence of the deeper valleys of the pass. We took our time wandering out over McGill Pass and managed to nail the high traverse out to Bostock. This capped what can only be described as a routefinding coup compared to our last outing on this approximate route. It was even still daylight! Which made hitchhiking back to the Discovery Center much easier, though the lovely fellow who picked us up with his truck and boat trailer was utterly baffled by how we had come to be standing on the side of the road with ski gear in that particular spot.