I could not have timed leaving BC better this winter. I spent a good chunk of time in Europe racing skimo world cups and during that period I’m pretty sure it snowed once at home. Folks did not seem impressed. Fortunately, that one snowfall accounted for about a meter, just before I got home – which really spruced things up. After the inevitable massive avalanche cycle ensued, we got a really nice window for Rogers Pass north faces in full powder conditions.

Eric was in town for the first time in a while, and we got things started with a visit to Ursus Minor; a truly wonderful ski peak. It’s got the scenic skintrack up the the south face, the pleasant scramble to the summit and several lines of varying character and difficulty from there. The north face is pretty imposing, with a huge glacial roll that seems to continue forever. We were still feeling a bit cautious about stepping out so we did a hearty roped ski cut or two before we felt good about committing to the upper pitch for a series of glorious turns. The line then traverses across some exposure, where we again felt pretty cautious in the unsupported terrain.

There were absolutely no signs of instability – it had just been a weird winter and now we were skiing deep pow over exposure. Anyway, Eric busted the rope back out and we had a lengthy bit of discussion, more about our own headspace, motivations and psychology than the snowpack. Eventually we found an acceptable spot for him to belay me from, figuring that if the mountain hadn’t thrown us off after all that pontificating it probably wasn’t going to. I stomped across the few meters we were worried about with no results and we both romped down through perfect snow on the rest of the face into the moraines below.

We’d tried to scope out an exit to the west, via the Bruins glacier, on the map beforehand with hopes of poking around Ursus Major a bit. Neither of us could tell if the intervening north ridge of Ursus Minor was a reasonable thing to traverse over or not though, and I couldn’t remember taking a good look at it any of the times I’ve been over there. So we wandered up to take a look. Now, I’m not saying it doesn’t go – like many of these west facing sneaks in the pass, I’m sure it does. Somewhere. But from the top it wasn’t especially apparent where, and we didn’t much feel like a below treeline rappelling adventure. Abandoning that ridge, we traversed the trippy moraines beneath Grizzly Mountain to a more standard exit at Little/Big Sifton col. Based on the rapidly increasing temperature, the day didn’t have much more skiing left in it anyway, so we happily skied hot pow down to the road.

Another storm rolled through for a few days and Eric went back to the coast. But after things cleared, the window remained wide open. Michael was keen to take advantage, and I’d just had eyes on the north side of the Ursus group, so back to that neighborhood we went. This time directly up Little Sifton and over to the west ridge of Sifton proper, which I’d climbed in the summer and felt pretty medium about our chances of ascending in winter conditions.

We had ourselves quite a fun and involved scramble until we hit the crux of the ridge, which looked… pretty cruxy indeed. Far more imposing than in summer conditions. Much like that north ridge of Ursus Minor I mentioned above, it’s something we probably could have thrown ourselves at with some success. But we were there to ski and not quite equipped to tackle it safely. (The proliferation of hyperstatic glacier/rap cords has really put a damper on spontaneous trad leads during my ski tours.) Plus there was a nice couloir down onto the NW glacier below, which led us right to the more standard summit ridge – an easy and pleasant ramble on snow and big blocks.

This north face is another roll into the void type experience. Again, we slammed a good roped ski cut into it before letting rip into probably the best combination of snow quality and position I’ve had this season. Seriously, it was spectacular. The upper face drains into sort of an open corner/couloir feature, which skied nearly as well. Out over Sifton/Rogers col and down the uninteresting but efficient Rogers Glacier to the road.

Now, look, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? The following morning we headed right back to this same group of north faces, this time with Grizzly in our sights. Temps were rising fast and it looked like the window was about to close for real, so we rallied up the south face of Grizzly at a good solid pace as soon as the permit areas opened for the day.

At the ridge I couldn’t quite remember where the north facing ramp I wanted to ski started from, so we climbed over to the true (east) summit to see if anything went from there. The ridge was sporting a bit of a double cornice and anything we disturbed on the solar side peeled off, so it was a bit involved. Most winters there is probably a line to be skied off the true summit, but in this low snow year it looked like a free base grind. As did the line I’d actually scoped, way over on the west summit. Whoops. Well, back over that way we went, as there was a secondary ramp just below the high point which looked pretty excellent. Steep, cold and well sheltered; it seemed to be holding excellent snow.

My little trio of Ursus north faces wrapped up in style with the steepest turns of the week, some fast slough to manage and another beautiful descent into the quiet of Ursus Creek. The heat was on now though, and there was no time to enjoy it as Mikey and I hurried back over to the Sifton glacier, following the remnants of the track that Eric and I had put in at the beginning of the week. Now bored of the Hermit ski out, we said farewell to the zone for a while and left the snowpack to cook away in peace.