Chief Pascall - Weekend of Camping and Dialin' it in!
April 7th and 8th 2006
Many times now have we skied in this area. We decided on this rare two day stint of good weather to do the annual snow camping thing to maximize our time scoping out Chief Pascall. Check out our previous visits twice in 2004 - February and April. Once again in Jan. 2006.
Here is Lee after taking lessons from Frank to put all your crap around your neck for easy access...
We start along the logging road and you can see the ridge we accessed back in January. This time we want to skin up the treed knoll on picture right, but on a more Northern Aspect that will get us on the other side of this bowl.
We get to the clearcut at the bottom of the treed knoll and head further North ( climbers right ) before starting to skin up.
The skin up was not as steep as the more South Eastern Aspect and the skin penetration was minimal. It took an hour to get up to the top of the ridge! Previously it took 2-3 hours on the steeper side of the knoll!
I was on my new Movement Spark skis with the Coltex skins today. Those skins must be made of goat cause they sure liked to climb!
At the top of a Ridge of Pascall we are now looking across at the Ridge we climbed up back in January. On the other side of this Ridge is the Joffre/Pascall Glacier. You can see Joffre peaking above the ridge. You have to cross this big bowl and up another ridge to get to the Keith Flavelle Hut. The steeper North facing slopes were sluffing today. We are at 1844m elevation, temp 10.5oC. BALMY! We considered traversing below the peak of Pascall on the other side of where I am sitting, but there was A LOT of sluffing going on.
From this Vantage point you could see Cayoosh and Marriot.
The complete pano from Cayoosh to Duffey Lake!
Here I am skinning to a nice little roll, past which it gets STEEP, but from which you get a nice ski to a lower treed meadow.
We ski down the roll. No skier trigger avalanches were initiated!
We continue down to the trees, the snow gets a bit more mushy and spring like. Off the knoll it was still winter. The Sparks flew over the colder snow, when the snow got heavier the skies did get tossed around a bit. Considering how light these skis are it's not that surprising!
Lee skiing to the trees!
From the trees we traverse across the peak of Pascall and skin back up to get another run. Lee climbs up a little rock, the only rock climbing we were going to get in that day!
Lee was eyeing the Chute... We just came from the top of the sparsley treed knoll just below the chute on lookers left.
Looking back up you can see a low shoulder which we think is easily accessed from the Joffre/Pascall Glacier bowl. We ski down to another treed meadow further North West.
The view of the complete N/E face of Chief Pascall. Far right is the treed knoll we skied up. The pink line is our route.
A better view of the treed knoll we skied up and the peak of Chief Pascall. We ended up just above where the trees thin out. Access from this side is less steep and north facing.
Back at the camp my little sherpa collects our camping stuff to prepare for the night.
We set up the tent on a flat spot near the creek so we don't have to boil water...
Here's Lee sparking up up the MSR Whisperlite with the great bonfire feature!
Sitting at our spot putting on some warm clothes!
My server!
The next morning we are up at the crack of 8:00 after Lee woke up at 7:00, our normal wake up time... cold and wanting to sleep some more. After trying to boil water for oatmeal for an hour, we ate our bagels and cream cheese for breakfast and were off by 9:30 for the next tour! NOTE- had we driven back to Whistler and slept there, we would have been up at 7:00, eaten bacon, sausages and toast, Lee would not have required my booties in the middle of the night, I would not have had to blow up my Exped mattress TWICE during the night, nor put on my extra toque and we would have gotten to the parking lot by 9:00 to start this days tour earlier... Oh well, we saved an extra 2 hours of driving...
Here we are at the bowl of Joffre/Chief Pascall. Over the ridge on lookers left is the Keith Flavelle Hut.
Natural Avalanches were going off at higher elevations on steep rocky terrain.
Our goal today was to ski some North or North East facing Slopes. One that came to mind was the shaded moraine in the middle of this picture. We decided to access it from the far lookers right area and skiing back to the top of the moraine. To get to the far side of the valley, we went high at tree line and then into the trees of this west facing knoll. We wanted to get to the sparsley tree covered roll right of the exposed rock face.
Looking back at the ridge separating this bowl from Keith Flavelle Hut.
As we approached this treed ridge we saw that the area continued... The depression in the forground is a lake. We decide at this point with the warming day and sounds of avalanches in the distance to turn back. Next time we would like to go to the shoulder which I think will take us to the 2nd slope we skied the day before on the NE side of Chief Pascall. Also to stay high and access the moraine would put us into pretty exposed terrain.
We head back towards Joffre/Pascall Glacier and ski this low angled East facing slope. It was nice!
We head back to our camp and pack up our stuff! Mighty-LEE is excited to carry the 60 litre pack while little ol me gets to carry the STUFFED 35 litre pack!
AWWWWWW
Never missing a chance to work on his balance and flexibility! Fortunately the ski-out softened up by now so it wasn't too bad!
For aerial shots of this general area click here and look for pictures of the Joffre Group