TR- Rogers Pass: Asulkan Valley & Forever Young Couloir - Dec 27-30 2012

[Neuro]

Ah, the holiday season, time for family, over-eating and maybe a 10 day road trip. Hummus, AngryBeard and I piled into a Subaru and made our way to Rogers Pass. The plan was simple... If we got snow, we'd tour when we could and shred at the resort, if we had a dry spell and good avy conditions, bag some big lines.



Day 1 - skinning up the Asulkan Valley.

We got a late arrival to Rogers Pass on our first day. We'd left Vancouver at 6pm on the 26th, and opted to get a few hours of sleep in a hotel in Revelstoke after arriving at 2am.




What brought us up this valley... The Forever Young couloir.



OUr humble abode for the next few nights. We set up about a few ridges over from the Asulkan hut. Normally you'd just book the hut or do daytrips from the parking lot, but we wanted to stay in the same area for a few days, and the hut was already booked by some folks from the Caltech outdoors club.

Day 2 - Young's Peak Traverse

We set off on the 28th hoping to hit the Forever Young Couloir. Visibility was in and out as we worked our way towards Young's Peak.



The Asulkan hut, with the Asulkan Valley below.



We did some steep skinning up the Headwall below the peaks.



And found ourselves wandering past windridges near the summit.



Before dropping down from the summit towards what we thought was the snowfield close to Forever Young.


Visibility went to hell at this point, and we found ourselves contemplating retracing our steps. We were pretty sure there was a snowfield below a small cornice, but couldn't tell anything for sure in the thick whiteout...



We set up an anchor and Hummus walked out to the edge of the cornice. Turned out it was only about 2.5m at this point, and a few days later we learned there was a section that rolled over completely. We cut a slot in the cornice and dropped down to the snowfield, but couldn't figure out where the top of Forever Young was. With it getting close to 1600h, we opted to ski down the Illecillewat Glacier. No pics from this section, but it was definietely a bit sketchy skiing the glacier unroped close to dusk. We ollowed someones uptrack and took it slow, inally ind ourselves at the bottom of the Valley around 1730h. Skiing back to our campsite involved repeating most of the skin we'd completed the day before up the Asulkan Valley.

Day 3 - Seven Steps of Paradise

After our less than succesful attempt at getting Forever Young on Day 2, we decided to grab Seven Steps of Paradise and scope out the couloir from below. We made our way back up the headwall to below Young's peak and dropped in.



Hummus dropping down onto the headwall.





AngryBeard

We skiied seven steps of paradise, down to the bottom of Forever Young to get a better look at it.



The couloir from the bottom. We grabbed some GPS coordinates and a compass bearing so we could find it if visibility was poor again.

Day 4 - Forever Young Couloir

After getting some additional beta we decided to give forever Young another go. Visibility up high was substantially better and as we skinned up the headwall to Young's peak we enjoyed some fantastic view.



Skinning up the headwall



The view looking towards Saphire COl.



Skiing down from Young's Peak.

WIth good vis it was quite easy to find the entrance to Forever Young. It turned out that we were within 50m of the entrance on the first day.



AngryBeard at the entrance to Forever Young.

Regrettably, as we skiied the line we dropped down into the low lying clouds down the Valley.



Skiing Down





Hummus.

Snow conditions were pretty average. Some wind crust with occasional sections of pow depending on the aspect. Still a very asthetic line, and it's pretty amazing to have giant cliff walls on either side of you. Some great skiing and definitely some good skiing.

[Kirby]

Nice work! Looks like a good time was had by all.

Thanks for sharing.

[LeeLau]

Nice attempt. There's a ton of couloirs too on the Connaught and Tupper drainage too fyi if you are hunting

[wendigo]

Nice! We were in there about a week earlier and I wanted to ski that couloir so bad but conditions were not conducive.

[Neuro]

Thanks, for the comments all.

Nice attempt. There's a ton of couloirs too on the Connaught and Tupper drainage too fyi if you are hunting

We tried to bag STS and Grizzly in the Connaught drainage, but low lying clouds thwarted our attempts. We did get Swiss Couloir in Bluebird conditions and Hummus/AngryBeard got Ross couloir as well. We'll throw some more TRs up for those later in the week, but for now I'll throw just a few pics up to wet people's appetities.

[LeeLau]

There's four distinct couloirs off the Swiss/Rogers massif. You can ski off the back side of one of the swiss couloirs but it was salt and pepper when we did it and would have been twin rope raps. Plus the back side glacier has huge slots.

There's a few sketchy couloirs too off Ross Peak (lots of cornice potential). Oh well -- now you got me all nostalgic.

[montpow]

I look at our "big" mountains in MT, (which they are compared to East coast) and then you see something like Rogers or Alaska or Alagna and realize how massive they are. Looks like a lot of work and a lot of fun.

[schwerty]

Hard to beat that region! Solid work!

[_Aaron_]

Love it!!

[Bronic]

Nice pics!!

[jamesp]

Nice pic's. If it were me & the hut was full I would have waited for the next trip. Impressed you took the tent & went anyways!

[AngryBeard]

There's four distinct couloirs off the Swiss/Rogers massif. You can ski off the back side of one of the swiss couloirs but it was salt and pepper when we did it and would have been twin rope raps. Plus the back side glacier has huge slots.

There's a few sketchy couloirs too off Ross Peak (lots of cornice potential). Oh well -- now you got me all nostalgic.

We were originally hoping to camp on The Swiss Glacier but were noobs to the area, we knew about the permitting system but didn't realize that we couldn't camp wherever we wanted. Once we broke out of the clouds and saw what we were dealing with we could only fantasize how amazing a ski base would have been there providing an opportunity to just check boxes:
- Swiss Couloir which we skiied
- Lesser Swiss Couloirs were probably to boney on this trip
- Swiss - Truda
- As Lee mentioned the couloir on the back of Swiss (would have probably been the most intense line - unfortunately we were a few meters short of topping out the Couloir so no idea how it looked over there)
- Rogers Peak down to the headwall

... Like a kid in a candy store

Also, we did grab one of those Couloirs off Ross, TR is here

[Snowvols]

Was there earlier this week and hidden in the clouds except the last day. Was hoping to hit Forever Young but unable to due to clouds. Glad you got after it! The Asulkan Valley is so sick.