Egypt Lake

It's 6am on Friday morning, and Yoko has called to tell me that Ivan is sick.



The skies were cloudy by the time we reached the Sunshine parking lot. The forecast called for 5cm of snow, but with the storm that passed through earlier in the week, I was not hopeful for any tracks leading over Healy Pass to the Egypt Lake shelter.

Ivan and Yoko had been to the shelter in the winter before. I had been in the summer, but things are different in the winter. Navigation is more difficult, landmarks are often obscured or hidden completely, and the consequences of failure are much more harsh.

My own misadventures in navigation are no secret. Whether it is on foot, in the snow, or hanging off a cliff face, I often rely on my speed and focus to get me out of tricky spots. With a group of 4, I could no longer count on these things to protect us.

Ray the trail breaking machine

And now, we were venturing off as a group of 4, culled down from 8 due to cancellations and sickness. Fortunately, my secret weapon was Ray, with whom I had gotten into (and out of) plenty of interesting situations.

Angie and her own personal Bataan Death March

The trail to Healy Pass starts behind the gondola station at Sunshine and parallels the ski-out for the first couple of kilometres. This trail is often used by day skiers who want to go to Healy Pass or Simpson Pass, either for touring or turns, so is usually packed down and easy to follow. It's mostly a steady uphill past the Healy Creek bridge.

Joanne getting her second wind

The dense forest ends after about 7.7km, after which it's cross country. Armed with my maps and compass, we headed in a northwesterly direction, trying to avoid any convex rolls as the avalanche conditions were steadily increasing due to the light snow (now heavy) that had been falling since we left the car. Navigation was difficult as we could only see about 20 feet ahead of us due to the blowing snow and heavy cloud cover.

Along the way, we ran into a group of 3 skiing out of the shelter. For a little while, we were able to follow their tracks across the rolling terrain. However, the snow and wind had picked up considerably since the start of the day, and all signs of tracks were obliterated within 15 minutes. As we were above treeline, we would have to find our own entrance back into the trees in the valley of East Verdant Creek.

We knew that the shelter was roughly northwest from the pass. We also knew that we could err on the side of heading west, hitting the creek, then following the creek north directly to the shelter. Traversing the side of the valley wall made progress easier as we were steadily losing elevation, and there were some delicious glades which we made a mental note of to revisit the next day.

As we were heading down into the valley, a group of 3 caught up from behind us. Coincidentally, two of them Ray and I had bumped into at Taylor Lake two weekends previous. They forged on ahead and left us a nice trail to follow all the way to the shelter.

The shelter is fairly spartan, but the wood stove was very welcome as the snow was falling hard and the wind was fierce.

We awoke the next day to find our tracks from the previous day obliterated. I estimate we got about 30cm overnight, and the wind had shifted everything around, likely forming lots of wind slabs in exposed areas. We decided to stay in the trees that day and revisit the nice glades on the way back up to the pass. The other group of 3 left the shelter maybe an hour before us, but as they were breaking trail, we caught up to them well before the pass.

Skiing in the glades was difficult as the snow was moderately dense and bottomless. Ray whipped out his probe at one point and measured the snowpack at about 2m. Even my mid-fat skis were having difficulty staying afloat, and I could only get 1 or 2 turns in before the snow accumulated up to my knees and forced me to grind to a halt. I am thinking that some early rocker skis might be the ticket for conditions like this.

We went back to the hut for lunch, and in the afternoon, Joanne and I headed out to do some exploring. We managed to find Egypt Lake via a very circuitous route, then navigated our way back to the hut by skimming along the base of Pharaoh Peaks, ending up behind the shelter.

That evening, around 6pm, as I was collecting snow for melting, another group of 4 arrived at the hut, tired and relieved. They had turned west much earlier than we had (and of course, there were no tracks to follow as everything was snowed in) and bushwhacked along the creek. We even discovered that we had a common link. The backcountry is a small place, apparently.

Far from prying ears, we could finally begin discussions on the real reason for coming to Egypt Lake: Nicolas Baass

We woke up on Sunday, the day of our departure, to see that it was STILL snowing. There was an accumulation of at least 50cm since we arrived at the shelter, but there were some minor signs of things clearing up a bit (like being able to see the mountain directly behind the hut).

Sunday morning was the first time we were able to see Pharaoh Peaks

It was going to be a long day, so I got up while it was still dark, and started getting ready for the task ahead. Ray, being the trail breaking machine that he is, started about 30 minutes earlier than us up the pass. This made things much easier for us, as ski penetration was knee-deep in some places.

In addition to all of the snow, high winds knocked down this tree overnight

Beyond the pass, it was simply a matter of following the correct valleys. We did diverge from the trail by keeping a higher elevation, which allowed us to have a fun little run down a steep treed area (I'd compare it to the double black glades on Larch Mountain at Lake Louise resort). This eventually reconnected with the main trail, which we followed past a couple of avalanche runouts (which had had some small releases) back to Healy Creek.

Breaking trail through shin-deep powder near Healy Pass

It was a little weird reconnecting with the Sunshine ski-out, as snowboarders of questionable ability whizzed by us at unsafe (for them) speeds. The sound of the gondola was humming in the air, and it dawned on me that resort skiing would never ever compare to the backcountry. However, knocking back a Beavertail at the Grizzly Paw did remind me that there are some advantages to living a civilized life.