The first day is always truncated due to the exercise of flying in and getting settled into hutlife. GAH's staging is, fortunately, quite organized (Icefall Lodge - take notes); all the bags and supplies went to the right huts; staff at staging keep things moving along and we were in on a clear day without excitement.
Mindful of the dicey snowpack reported in the BC interior this year we tiptoed into the Quiver/Profanity Peak zone to check out conditions. We found that the snow that had fallen the night before had bonded well and was of acceptable quality and quantity of lightness
On our second day, we wandered over to the Sentry/Rampart Peak area hoping to see how the winds had treated the alpine & hoping to get a weather window. It turned out the winds had howled in from the Selkirks to our west slabbing up terrain in the alpine. The weather window was also brief but gave us glorious sunrise light as we poked up into treeline.
We skied treed shots finding good, deep, stable snow and hallways from 2250 - 1750m. Lucky us as the new snow had probably covered trees and alder in the lower elevation terrain giving us lots of room to play
Ascent views
Rampart/Excalibur tree shots
Confidence was growing as we got re-acquainted with Sentry's convoluted terrain with it's micro-ridges. The forecast was for flurries to start the day but then for some clearing. We started off with a "baby" Siege taking the rather famous N facing shot dropping right off the hut but with a variation for a less-steep entry.
Then we made our way up to Archer's Woods putting in a skin track over towards Don't Tell Russ, the top of S-Squared then countouring over to Plumbline. We even had a chance to look down the gut of the alarmingly large slidepath of Booly Booly where we marvelled at how long it would take to exit that run (but what a run it would be!). Then continued over to Plumbline where we had our first run testing the sub-alpine. It skied beautifully!
We finished by doing Siege from it's proper start as a bonus run. That too skied fine as did all the rest of the runs we did that day.
Siege then Archer's Woods
Booly Booly. A long way down. A long way out
Magnificent snow on Plumbline
Siege was so good we had to do it again to end the day