Lee loves crowds.

We met this Japanese guy who was out for a day tour in Singing Pass. He told us that he usually lives near Tokyo, but has spent the last 10 winters living in a tent at the base of the singing pass trail. Pretty hard to beat that sort of dedication to skiing.

Lee on his way to the hut.

We had to wait a bit while the sun went down, but the colours and views were well worth it.

Photo taken from near Whirlwind, the spearhead is in the background.

Between Whirlwind and Refuse Pinnacle

The small dots in the couloir are a couple of Swiss guys who came up to ski lines in the area.

Lee and Sharon

To give scale to this photo, the black dot above the cornice is a person.

The lack of snow in Europe is driving the diehards over here to get their fixes. These guyswere dirt bagging around BC in a RV for a couple of weeks. On Lees recommendation they got offthe coast and headed up to Rogers Pass soon after this.

It was cold at the hut , -20C outside, -12C inside and the outhouse was filled up inside with snow. But with views like this it is hard to complain.

Once Ron figured out the right T-bar to get onto, we made good time up and out of the Blackcomb glacier.

Wedge in the background

Looking east, from just above the camp

We had hoped to camp here for two days and ski as lines around the area. The snow was not so good so we ended up touring instead.

These guys came all the way from the interior to ski the beautiful snow in the coast mountains. They were up for 4 days doing some training for their ski guide exams.

Zdenick looks down the north face of Tremor.

Zdenick, Ron and Lee enjoying the view.

After drooling over this line for the previous day, Lee dropped off the summit and skied the northface of Tremor. The rest of us skipped out figuring the slope would be wind hammered. Turned out to be not so bad after all.

Lee got to admire his turns from the camp.

Photo by Lee Lau

Zdenick and Ron on the Shudder glacier. Wedge and James Turner are in the background.

Shudder Glacier on the left, the Shatter on the right. Wedge and James Turner again in the background.

Unfortunately these like the rest of the Shatter glacier was inconsistent breakable crust. Pretty much as nasty skiing as you can get. Snow like this made me glad I left the tele ski's at home.

Lee cranking a hard snowplow as he comes back into camp.

Zdenick on the col between the Ripsaw and Naden glaciers. The snow was crappy skiing, but great for touring. The hard crust made for easy going across all of the glaciers at the east corner of the traverse.

A little bootpacking between the Macbeth and Iago glaciers.

Photo by Ron

On south facing slopes the snow was almost corn, we got some reasonable turns coming down onto the Diavolo glacier.

Climbing over the south shoulder of Benvolio. The Diavolo glacier is in the background.

All of the other groups that skied the Spearhead that weekend crossed under this cornice. You can see that cornice fall caused a slide that ripped down the the glacier ice. An additional 50m climbing avoids all of this. The warm weather had been causing cornice fall and sun sluffs all over the Spearhead.

The day before we passed under Overlord 4 skiers had set a high traverse across the face underneath the cornices. You can see their track well inside the shadow from the ridge. The cornice chunks had fallen after their traverse.

A last group shot before we dropped down into singing pass.

Day one, Sharon, Lee and Tim

We headed up the ridge toward Ursus Major, then traversed high under the rocks to to get into 8812 bowl.

8812 bowl was sun crusted and nasty, so we dropped in from Bruins Pass and got a couple runs in down towards the creek.

Looking east.

Looking west with the Rogers Glacier and Mt Sifton in the background.

Lee working on his mountain fetish. Iconoclast is just behind his poles and Sir Stanford is the larger mtn in the centre.

Lee and Kendal

this was not a dirt bag trip, we stayed in hotels all 4 nights. Though Lee did managed to get us free accommodationon the first 2 nights.

Taken from the ridge leading to Eagle Peak.

We had hoped to climb over the col to the east of Eagle Peak and ski the NRC gullies, but the weather was too warm to pass under the cliff bands. Instead we headed towards the Illecillewaet and skied a couple runs on the moraineat its base.

I managed to break one of my ribs on the traverse over to the Illecillewaet. It did not really kick in until just before the cars, so I managed to get in two last runs.

Our last run down below the glacier.