Words by Lee Lau. Pictures by Lee Lau and Steve Hutchison
Other useful links:
- British Columbia’s Ministry of Environment official web-page for Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park
- Kootenay Rockies webpageon Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park with summer routes and activities primarily described.
- Alpine Club of Canada’s webpageon the Kokanee Glacier chalet.
Admittedly I was starting to get bored. There’s only so much corn one can take. The terrain is fantastic but the narrow time window for touring with the stinking hot temperatures meant that we were limited in choices. Instead of doing my normal last-day antics of trying to bang out a whackload of elevation we elected to head over to the Griffin Creek area (Giegerich, Nansen) to finish off the remaining peaks in that neighbourhood.
Back to Griffin Creek again
Pretty good views from the peak of Giegerich
Even better corn skiing from Giegerich’s E slopes – could have put slalom gates up there the snow was so good for carving
By now, we had the Giegerich – Nansen corn faces dialed. After hitting the sweet spot on Giegerich, we headed over to Nansen. I elected to ski off the peak while Steve went up another unnamed peak to its south. I then headed over to Steve and joined him for the additional run.
Headed over to Nansen for a small steep shot
Steve’s bootpack up an unnamed peak and a victim of his size 11s
Peak number 2 corn-skiing – unnamed peak.
Steve’s a good buddy. Along with Dave, he pretty much got me into ski-touring and mountaineering/scrambling. We were all self-taught – bumblers in the woods and snow no doubt. He’s since moved to Vancouver Island where ski touring on a regular basis is a bit of a chore so it was pretty cool to get out in the mountains with him again. Sadly his appetite isn’t as big it used to be so we were definitely overprepared for food.
It was a good week with no shortage of sun and good views. Although conditions didn’t let us hit everything in sight there definitely is potential up there and I’d love to go back with decent snow to check out the area in more detail.
Buddy shot on Giegerich
and the last run of the week – down Giegerich and back to the chalet
Day 7’s route