Home

KOKANEE GLACIER - May 5 to 12, 2007
Day 3 - Mt Robert Smith

Words by Lee Lau. Pictures by Lee Lau and Steve Hutchison

|| Day 1 - May 5 - Fly in and Lemon Pass || Day 2 - May 6 - Kokanee Glacier - Kokanee Peak - Battleship || Day 3 - May 7 - Glory Basin - Mt Robert Smith || Day 4 - May 8 - Sunset - Outlook - John Carter || Day 5 - Kokanee Glacier - Kokanee Peak - Pyramid Peak || Day 6 - Kokanee Glacier - Keyhole - Kokanee Lake || Day 7 - Mt Giegerich - Mt Nansen - Glory Basin ||

Other useful links:

It didn't look pretty in the morning. The sky was overcast, the temperatures had not dropped below freezing all night and to top it off, the pine marten had somehow got some of our cinnamon buns. These are the chances you take when you tour in the spring. With Nelson's climate near-tropical forecast for the entire week (plus 20s for the next 5 days) all Steve and I could hope was that today was an anomaly.

We decided to play it conservative and go look at some peaks north of the chalet.

Kaslo Lake sunset.

Approaching bad weather and thunderheads chases as away from Retallack and Granite Knob

I had this itch to look at two nice size peaks north of the chalet - Mt Retallack and Granite Knob. As we crested the first rise north of the chalet, we realized that our route would involve traversing under some west facing slopes that had been blast by intense sun through the last few days. Additionally, these slopes had seen some sizeable avalanche activity in recent times. Not liking our chances under big exposed sun-phacked slopes, we elected to head up a more sheltered SW facing drainage towards the Nansen - Giegerich - Robert Smith group.

Steve approaches the ridge of Robert Smith

Conditions deteriorated further as we progressed up this drainage with Nansen's cornices to the west of us. Already we could nervously hear wet slides naturally trigger every 10 minutes or so. We discussed heading back but decided to scout a line on a protected ridge up towards Robert Smith. At the very least, we figured we would get a good view towards Boomerang. Fortunately this route did go and it was safe. We parked at a good spot near Robert Smith but neither of us felt all too good about testing cornice integrity towards Robert Smith proper.

View from Robert Smith ridge towards Sunset, Giegerich, Nansen - from L to R.

Great views. Frightening perch. I'm not kidding when I say that natural slides were coming off slopes at a rate of close to one a minute. None of the bus-sized cornices on Nansen went while we were looking but I could imagine them getting more and more droopy.

We skied out the way we came, headed back towards the Lemon Pass area and then bee-lined back to the chalet. Everyone else made it back in one piece although the Scots had an exciting time with big wet rollys on the east face of Sunset Peak.

Dropping down slurpee snow off Robert Smith

Lee with view looking back towards ridgeline north to Retallack.

Steve with view looking back to Nansen- Robert Smith area

Wet slide danger was high today as the Scots find out ~ photo Todd Nichols

Touring in alpine boots is never fun. Touring in alpine boots in wet sticky snow is painful. Relief on Steve's face

Views of living room and kitchen at the Kokanee Glacier chalet

 

Chalet evening light

Day 3's route

 

|| Day 1 - May 5 - Fly in and Lemon Pass || Day 2 - May 6 - Kokanee Glacier - Kokanee Peak - Battleship || Day 3 - May 7 - Glory Basin - Mt Robert Smith || Day 4 - May 8 - Sunset - Outlook - John Carter || Day 5 - Kokanee Glacier - Kokanee Peak - Pyramid Peak || Day 6 - Kokanee Glacier - Keyhole - Kokanee Lake || Day 7 - Mt Giegerich - Mt Nansen - Glory Basin ||

 

Home