Pow powty pow pow, eh. That's Canadian for "awesome skiing." Craggy St. Nicholas Peak looks on approvingly.
First face shots. They’re an inaugural event that ranks right up there with the first night sleeping under the stars, first Brass Monkey, the losing of virginity, etcetera. My first face shots came in some glorious Cameron Pass powder – Montgomery Bowl, to be exact. I spent most of my youth snowboarding, so when I learned to Tele ski, snow in the face was quite novel.
I got the skin track blues. En route to the Mt. Gordon summit.
My friend Levi recently got his first (Cheers!). He drove 24 hours, toured for six days into the Canadian Rockies, and summited two peaks to get there, but get there he did, by god.
Levi and four mutual friends – Sam Riggs, Michelle Bodenhammer, Judith Robertson and Monica Reuning – recently completed the so-called Mini Wapta Traverse, a 16-mile round trip along the Wapta Ice Field in Banff National Park. The tour, with multiple day excursions including ascents of both Mt. Gordon (10,500 ft.) and Mt. Thompson (10,200 ft.), took them 8 days. The route is a shorter version of the Wapta Traverse, a major hot spot for Canadian ski mountaineering due to the relative safety of the route, and easy access to the route’s nearby peaks.
Peyto Hut: somewhere between Arctic mobile home and Japanese Zen garden.
Along the way the crew stayed in two huts, Peyto and Bow, which looked pretty foreign to a Colorado hut-tripper like me. “The Peyto Hut was definitely like a trailer,” Levi says. “It looks like someone dragged a little mobile home trailer up into the mountains.”
Levi, Michelle and Sam skied Mt. Thompson on day four out of the Peyto hut. “We made two unsuccessful attempts at another peak,” says Levi, “and then in an afternoon we skied Thompson. It was New Year’s Eve, so we were really feeling like we had something to celebrate up there on that mountain. Then we had a tremendous dinner in the hut – chicken pot pie, two appetizers, two desserts, whiskey and Bailey’s.”
On day 5 the group toured 4 miles to the Bow Hut, their second of the trip. “The Bow hut was a little more like a 10th Mtn. Division Hut,” Levi says. “You’ve got a wood stove, a common room, bunks, and such.” From Bow they made consecutive day trips up Mt. Gordon then along the Crow Foot Route, which includes descending then re-ascending a 35-degree couloir.
The group definitely got another classic Wapta experience: whiteout blizzard navigation. “It wasn’t much of an issue,” Levi says, “but it brought challenges. Especially skiing downhill – you didn’t know how steep of a slope you were on.”
Hmmm...shall we take the fast way down, or go back the way we came? On the Summit of Mt. Thompson.
Despite ticking off tall mountains, and traversing glaciers with deep gaping, blue tears, Levi’s highlight was a simpler experience – one that can be found pretty close to home.
“After skiing Mt. Gordon we were skiing the slopes above the Bow hut, and we were actually on the glacier,” he recalls. “The snow was so good. We just kept getting free refills from the wind and new fallen snow. It was just fantastic powder skiing – my first face shots ever. It was also a relief to have skied Gordon because it was our one objective of the trip. We made it on our first try, and we made it as a group, all together.”
Levi is one of my heros these days. He trades 30 hours of work per month for rent in Leadville. He ski tours by day, and he watches Kung-Fu movies by night. He is a self-proclaimed unemployed backcountry ski bum, and that’s the way he likes it. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t wear an avalanche transceiver. Oh no, avalanches wear a Levi Burford transceiver. Recently Levi surfed my couch while we took a Level II Avalanche class in Crested Butte, and as he unloaded a huge Tupperware bin of dehydrated food he scavenged from Outward Bound course leftovers he said, “Man, I can probably stay unemployed until after February with all this food!”
Good luck with the unemployment, Levi, and stay above the snow. I look forward to more of your tales from the Midcountry.
Anyone else out there got a tale from their own personal Midcountry? Let’s hear it!
