Panorama Ridge

"It's -24C."

That was the temperature at the parking lot for Taylor Lake. The forecast called for sunny skies with a high of -6C in the afternoon, but it would be a cold morning. Fortunately, there wasn't much wind and the trail wound its way through forest for the first 3 hours, so it wouldn't be too difficult to stay warm once we got moving.

The trail from the parking lot to the elevation of Taylor Lake is mostly through dense forest

I had been looking forward to a cold day to test out some new gear, and things worked about as well as I expected. Breathing was difficult and everyone's bindings were squeaking, but after about half an hour we could see a bit of sun cracking through the trees, which gave us motivation to continue.

We got some interesting hoar frost going on at -24C

A couple of hours in, we got our first glimpse of Mount Bell (photo below). Our goal was to gain the second shoulder of Panorama Ridge north of Taylor Lake.

Joanne does not look pleased at the camera pointed at her

Eventually, we broke through to the meadow level with Taylor Lake. A couple that had left the parking lot a few minutes before us were sitting in the sun, eating lunch, so we went to say hi. They had decided not to continue further, as one of them was feeling ill. Very unfortunate, as the weather was simply brilliant and the ridge was within view.

The last hump before we let gravity do the work!

Another couple of hours and we reached our high point, where the temperature was 6C (!!!) with no wind. It was definitely t-shirt weather.

View from our high point, back down the trail

I did not bring a tripod this day, but it would have been nice to get a shot of the entire ridge. However, I was also happy to have not carried it the nearly 1000m in elevation that we had done.

Castle Mountain in the distance

We did cross some slopes which would have been touchy had avalanche conditions been worse, so we picked our line back down carefully, making sure to avoid the steep drop on the east side of the shoulder. The west side is gladed and there are many lines to choose from. We eventually skied back down to the trail and had an exciting run back down the creek to the car.

Snow conditions were fabulous, although a bit thin at the top, and the temperature at the end of the day was very comfortable. Awesome day!