After a wintery May and a cold June, the melt was finally, disappointingly, coming. With perhaps the last window of perfect conditions for the spring threatening to close, I booked the morning off work and rallied on up to the Icefields Center for a 4AM meetup with Mikey. He wanted to ski the Skyladder, or what’s left of it, and I just wanted to go skiing. I did have a bit of an ulterior motive though, as I figured Mt. Andromeda’s north face, or bowl, or whatever you want to call it might also be in. That’s a line I’ve long wanted to put some tracks into.

June is a truly wonderful time of year for skiing, particularly around the Columbia. Starting just before dawn, we hardly needed headlamps and we cruised happily over the moraines under the beginnings of a spectacular sunrise. Following the fairly well beaten trail towards the Skyladder, we could see a party of two ahead of us, already conveniently setting the bootpack if there wasn’t one already.

As we passed under the north face, it became clear that the classic line to the looker’s left of the massive, bowl topping serac was not going to be a fun time. Bare ice on the sneak around the wall of ice itself and the alternate couloir through the rocks to the left didn’t look so hot either. Or maybe it had been too hot, since there was plenty of debris covering the fan on that side.

Looker’s right looked pretty great on the other hand – serac the size of a small shopping center notwithstanding. I thought I saw a way to sneak around it using an un-corniced piece of ridge and a rib feature, however, so I snapped some pictures and resolved to have a peek later.

Up the Skyladder we went without any significant difficulty or ado. We caught up to the party ahead, who turned out to be a pleasant and talkative pair of climbers out for a traverse of Mt. Andromeda. They lamented their lack of skis for the return journey and I agreed. Then both of our groups wandered over to the west summit, where we lounged for a while, chatted some more and let a solo skier catch up so that there would be no risk of skiing over top of him. He made a quick turnaround and descended the Skyladder. Mikey followed. The snow looked awesome.

Alone now, I went over to the ridge, consulting my beta photos carefully to avoid stepping on a cornice and descending the face the fast way.

The original sneak I had identified was a very spooky approach indeed. With Mike gone, I had lost my quickest anchor building method (human ballast) and I really wasn’t in to mood to screw around with building a bollard to rappel off of. I could see that the next rib to my left was completely devoid of cornice, so I went over there to have a peek down onto the face. What I found was very, very steep and clad in a layer of perfect spring powder. This line has a reputation for its fearsome upper pitch so I wasn’t surprised per se, but yep – the reputation is well earned. Steep and, from the skier’s left side: exposed as hell. There was going to need to be a decent sized traverse to get over the cliff bands below and to the top of the skiable part of the bowl, but being able to see nearly all of it helped me decide that it looked fairly reasonable.

I prepared my things, including a quick access tether in case I found thinly covered ice and needed to anchor myself in a hurry. Ice tool under the shoulder strap for the same reason, then a few deep breaths and I was off. The first couple of turns on the rib were just spectacular. I’m a sucker for great position. Then the traverse, which crossed several micro aspects and felt, frankly, pretty spicy. The snowpack was thin; down to only five or ten cm in places, with dirty ancient ice or frozen scree beneath. In many cases the thin spots had fully faceted out and I was quite glad I had rigged for a quick anchor if I needed it. The pitch was steep enough to be on the very edge of holding snow, with streaks of bare ice nearby illustrating the point.

There is a reason, I decided, that this line is typically skied from the other side of the serac. It still it went smoothly enough, even if I did have to remind myself that I was having fun a few times.

Once I got under the ice wall, the pitch eased ever so slightly and my intended line came into view directly below. Clearly the angle continued to let up at the bottom, perhaps sustaining around 45 degrees from the mid point down. My sense of comfort returned as I could see the entirety of what was beneath again. Even the ice above, though very much a serac, looked rounded and old in a way that suggested it wasn’t likely to fall on me at a moment’s notice. Not that I wanted to hang out and test that idea mind you, so I shuffled some biners into skiing position on my harness and set off once more.

What a face this was, and in perfect conditions too! Supportive powder over a firm but grippy base. Just the right amount of slough and enough space to simply stagger each turn laterally and let it roar by. Perfect steep skiing. I went from being a little gripped to having pure, type one fun in an instant as I linked increasingly long turns all the way down to the triple(!) bergschrund below. I slowed a bit here to hop, hop, hop and then point it out across the debris lines covering crevasses I know the bottom of the bowl to be riddled with.

I was just in time to watch Mikey wrap up his descent of the Skyladder. Although it’s pretty much dead as a summer ice climbing route, it still makes for a spectacular spring ski objective. Looking back up at my line I thought maybe the initial spooky entrance next to the serac would have been fine after all, but I wasn’t unhappy with my approach either. We took a few more photos of a few more objectives, then cruised it back to the parking lot in time for elevenses; complete with appropriate Hobbit fare. If only conditions could be like this on the parkway all year, but then of course it wouldn’t be so special.

1: The full north face/bowl. 2: Mikey wraps up an increasingly anemic looking Skyladder. 3: Bryce. 4: A nice view of the valley from up high. 5: Forbes and friends.