Storm Mountain

Having skied the fire break a few weeks ago, I wanted to see what the rest of the route up Storm Mountain looked like.

Spring weather is in full force in the rockies and daytime highs in the teens are not uncommon anymore. It is getting more important to start the day early in order to avoid wet sluffing (which we saw much evidence of all over).

Summit of Storm Mountain, from the parking lot

We reached the top of the fire break in good time and saw no tracks other than our own.

Burned out husk from the 2003 forest fires

Peek-a-boo!

Following the old logging road, we came upon a downhill section where the trees thinned out.Not wanting to lose any elevation, we turned right  towards the valley and started bushwhacking, in search of the cirque below Storm Mountain.

Treeline

When we finally broke out from the trees, there was a long and exposed slope in front of us before the summit ridge. It had taken us a bit over 5 hours to reach this point, so we decided to have lunch and ski the slopes back down.

A series of crowns where slab avalanches had stepped down

Ptarmigan?

It was getting late in the day, so snow was starting to clump up on the bottom of our skis, which made sliding  a bit frustrating at times. But the going wasn't too bad and we skied a couple of avalanche slopes before reaching the top of the firebreak, from which we had a great run all the way back to the road.

Roger looks good skiing, but not so good stopping

Aki cutting the pow

Joanne finding a line amidst a completely skied-out slope

There was a lot less snow by the side of the road compared to my previous foray into the area, so we had to clamber up to the road itself and walk the rest of the way back to the car.

It took us 8 hours car-to-car on this beautiful, comfortable day, and now I have a better idea of what is required to summit Storm Mountain on a future day.