SKIING THROUGH THE VALHALLAS

[Arctos Guides]

Skiing in the Valhallas We’ve had an incredible stretch of skiing in April this year. Cool temps and intermittent precipitation have provided great conditions. As my guiding season was starting to wind down, I was beginning to feel the itch for some personal mountain time. A perfectly timed omega block was a call to action for a quick hit in the Valhallas.
Looking east towards Asgard and Midgard I got a hold of an old friend, Andrew McNab, who’s got a real penchant for this type of trip. After a quick bit of planning, we decided to meet Thursday morning in Hills and drop a vehicle on the Shannon Creek FSR and then head into the Valhallas from the south end of the range.
Bootpacking up a little chute to gain access to Hoder Creek

[Arctos Guides]

It was a pretty casual start 10 am start by the time we left the truck 42 km up the North Bannock FSR. The first climb of the trip cruised by quickly and was followed by a quick descent. The melt freeze conditions on solar aspects and the 10cm of settled pow on norths made for perfect travel conditions. Before long we cruising through the meadows of Drinnon Pass en route to Lucifer Col.DrinnonHeading for Lucifer ColAnother smooth ascent in the afternoon light transitioned into nice powder skiing on the north. We decided to keep rolling and head over one more pass to get to Ice Creek by dark. It was a solid day of walking with 2700m and 24km. After building an improvised shelter, we jumped into our sleeping bags ate dinner and crashed.

[Arctos Guides]

Cresting Lucifer Col Heading north

Andrew gaining Urd Col
Easing into camp for the night.Deluxe accommodations

[Arctos Guides]

A good night’s sleep, a casual morning of melting snow and fuelling up for the day we hit the skis at 0800. The crisp morning air and variable winds carried us up to our next pass and tasty descent.Morning pack upOur route for the day—all the way to the north end of the Valhalla RangeFun turnsOnce you drop into Beatrice Creek, you’re in the heart of the Valhallas. Steep and deep valleys, unfettered by logging, trails or roads, you feel the remoteness embrace you. This took us down to the lowest point on our trip and we had to do a bit of below treeline bootpacking to gain access to a cool that would lead us into Snow Creek.

[Arctos Guides]

Not as glamorous as alpine bootpackingLooking south towards our first run of the dayCreamy low angle powA northwards slide down Snow Creek brought us up to another steep forested climb to get back into the park. A quick descent a cruise through a sun-alpine valley and then a traversing descent brought us to one of the cruces of the trip-—Mt Meers. Fortunately for us, the cool temps and wind made perfect conditions to move up the big south aspect.

[Arctos Guides]

A northwards slide down Snow Creek brought us up to another steep forested climb to get back into the park. A quick descent a cruise through a sun-alpine valley and then a traversing descent brought us to one of the cruces of the trip-—Mt Meers. Fortunately for us, the cool temps and wind made perfect conditions to move up the big south aspect. Mt Meers Pow pow on the west face of Mt MeersIt was tough to walk by it, but we wanted to finish the trip that day, so we kept heading north. The descent off of Mt Meers was excellent.Pow to the lake and perfect skating across it

We took a solid break at the bottom of the run and drank a bunch of water from the creek. It took us eight and a half hours to get there and it would probably take us five more to get to the car. But the big climbs were done for the day, so on we went.

[Arctos Guides]

Looking north from Mt Meers
Another bootpack
The headwaters of Caribou Creek
Evening light and sun ripened crusts.

[Arctos Guides]

Apologies for the inverted format of this TR, but the file sizes were too large to fit into one post. The TR reads from the first post in the thread up.


More evening light
Second to last run of the trip

Moonlit pow turns

We dropped into that run at 8pm. The bright moonlight cast our shadows on the firm snow as we bootpacked our way up to the Vingolf Col. The run down to Shannon LakeWith headlamps on, we slid down to Shannon Lake and out the creek to the Shannon FSR. A couple of refrozen wet slides interrupted our descent, but at 945pm we made it to the car. The total for the day was ~ 3700m and 43km. I always have mixed emotions about running through the mountains as it feels like your speeding through the places you want to be. But trips like these always fuel future adventures-—

[bennymac]

Badass. Such a great pocket of “remote” terrain due no trails/roads. I don’t have a good map or sense of your actual route - were you traveling west of Beatrice Lake ie does Beatrice creek flow west to east into Beatrice Lake?

Great photos btw.

[yeahman]

Cool

[Arctos Guides]

Badass. Such a great pocket of “remote” terrain due no trails/roads. I don’t have a good map or sense of your actual route - were you traveling west of Beatrice Lake ie does Beatrice creek flow west to east into Beatrice Lake?

Great photos btw.

Thanks — You got it, we traversed the headwaters of Beatrice creek west of Beatrice Lake.

[bennymac]

Yeah you guys went right through the heart of it. Awesome.

I have fond memories of how beautiful that park is - we hiked in from Slocan past Beatrice Lake up to Ice Creek and then out over Urd and Lucifer passes. I’d like to go back and see more.