Jewels and Sunny Sapphire - VMT - March 10, 2005
Ruby Basin || Pyramid- Shannon Lake || Ruby - Sapphire - Emerald|| Little Sister - Big Mama|| The Jewels and Star Sapphire || Three Doors || Little Sister - Jasmin ||
Another sunny day leaves us with hope for corn. We head up to Ruby Basin and to the ridgeline for some more turns. Rupert has the guide's prerogative and drops in first. My only question - why aren't we skiing the mofos to the left of the picture?!?
Pretty awesome snow - possibly some of the best snow we've had this trip. Here Andrew and Catherine are doing the brother/sister tag team farming pow.
Andrew carving hard without breaking his binding this time
A view of Big Sister and Rugged Peak from Ruby Basin
A view of Sapphire Ridge looking east past Slocan Lake to Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park. Sunny Sapphire is on picture left, Shannon Lake is just below "A" peak - the peak on picture right.
We take the same run down Sapphire to the same assembly point as in our last trek to this area a couple of days ago, and start up the ridgeline. This time the weather is much improved. Sunny Sapphire and fresh corn is our objective. Sunny Saphhire is 2290m 0455828 5548828.
This is the view back east to the faces of Star Sapphire with our tracks tracing streaks in the snow. It's remarkable how wind and radiation has micro-effected surface snow. The slope on the left had good snow but only a few hundred meters to the right, the slope has a nice crust. Much to my chagrin, I learn later that the rest of the group led by Jonny bag the steep slopes in the shade off to picture left which we had just passed up!
Sharon finds corn - lots of it! And fast too!
After a few satisfying speed runs we are done for the day. This is the remarkable view looking southeast from the top of Emerald Forest. This tenure has a ton of terrain that we couldn't ski due to the paucity of snow.... grrrrr. Mt Vingolf looms tantalizingly close. Just past One Goat Pass to the west (right) of the peak is the Wragge Creek area which also has a lot of promise and has and entire set of new terrain. We end the day with a total of 1270 m
