Chickadee Valley

Avalanche conditions are quite favourable right now, so we decided to try some more complex terrain, both to gain experience in such terrain and to have some good, exposed lines for skiing.


Chickadee Valley runs along the south side of Boom Mountain. I'm not sure if there is a summer trail (there is no mention of one in any of my trail books), but parking is at Vermilion Pass, on the border of Alberta and British Columbia.

Compared to the previous day, we had a positively summer-like -16C at the parking lot. Another group had arrived before us and were also gearing up, leaving about 15 minutes ahead of us.

I expected the trail to be very well marked, as I imagined that it was quite busy the previous day, and I was not wrong. We passed the other group on the steep section of the approach. For the rest of the day, we occasionally heard some WHOO!!s from, presumably, happy skiers, but we didn't actually run into anyone.

Mount Whymper

The approach is quite short, maybe 2km to the first slopes off of Boom Mountain, but I wanted to do some exploring and get a sense of the entire valley, so Joanne and Emilie humoured me.

Following the creek to the head of the valley

We didn't get to the head of the valley, but came pretty close. It was difficult to pass all of the sweet slopes off of Boom Mountain, but we knew we would ski them on the way back out.

Boom Mountain and its many avalanche runout slopes

Following the creek, we made our way through a lightly gladed flat area before we spied what looked to be the last skiable runout, off the peak just beyond Boom Mountain. We headed up along the side until we reached the last spot protected by older growth trees, then had lunch and prepared to ski down.

Impressive looking mixed climb deep in the valley

The first run of the day had boot-top powder above a very solid midpack. The conditions were pretty consistent and I didn't feel too many irregularities.

From here, we angled back along the valley and skied two more slopes off of Boom Mountain. The snow on these slopes were not as good due to a thin (~2cm) sun crust. However, Joanne did break out the beer she had been carrying the entire time (a bottle of Crested Butte) and it tasted very refreshing.

In the end, we did 3 runs and about 700m of total elevation. A celebratory dinner at the Grizzly Paw capped off a great day.