Unfortunately, double digit temperatures rode in on the coattails of the storm that had just delivered 40 centimetres of fresh. By the time we rallied our 12 person group and toured into the alpine, ours skins were laden with mashed potato pow. Our first few turns involved balancing between breakable wind slab and snow that rode more like phlegm. We did however change up our aspect a bit and we found some slightly better skiing. And there was much rejoicing.

With all of us being at the bitter end of a long season of pow consumption, we gladly turned to the comforts of the lodge. Drinking, one of humankind’s greatest pastimes, got us through three days of shitty weather.

Before we hunkered down with Pilsners and Kokanees, we managed to summit and ski a mountain that some pioneering frenchman had dubbed La Clytte. C’etait incroyable. The open toe of the icefield made it difficult to gain the ramp that would take us up and down the vaginal feature, but it was there that we found the best snow on our trip.

By the time we got back to the lodge, Drunk Night! had been declared by all, so we set up shop at the heli-pad and watched the seemingly orchestrated explosions of a significant avalanche cycle. Failures of the entire snowpack crescendoed off the double-staged face across from the lodge.

The mountains’ decision to shed their winter layers struck big mountain skiing off our list of things to do. So in an unforeseen turn of events, we did what any group of shredders surrounded by sculptable snow would do.
We jibbed.

Marty Schaeffer was the only one of our crew of 12 that had any mentionable skills in the freestyle department. The rest of us, however, were able to drink beer, shovel snow and point our boards at the piles of snow we’d created.

All of a sudden, three days had passed. The skies were blue, the nights were clear and the 40 centimetres of “fresh” had officially cemented into a supportive crust. Pow was out. Corn was in. And much to the delight of crew, big mountain skiing was back on the menu.
There’s a topo map in the lodge with pencil lines that indicate the previously skied runs. After seven days of shredding, our group was able to scrawl seven more routes on the map.
Remi and I put turns down a line off Mount Kimmel that we called the Ghostface—a by-product of Remi’s liberal application of sunscreen. Three chutes off a ridge that runs like a dragon’s back between two shreddable basins were grouped under a series of dog-related names: RawDog, ShitDog and SweatDog.

The latter’s name came from bootpacking back up the thing in the May sunshine to regain the ridge. That little jaunt led us to the top of a line that we called the White Appliance—a south-facing little ditty that wouldn’t even be considered in less stable conditions.

While we waited for the face to turn to corn, Marty entertained us with a rendition of Love Potion #9. The face hadn’t turned yet, but Marty appeared to be finished singing so we dropped in. The White Appliance proved to be our last run of the trip, which was fine since it offered up 3500’ of shredding back to the lodge.

A week had passed. The precious beer that had monopolized most of our allowable heli weight had made its way through our systems and it was time to go home. Our flight back dropped us into temperatures approaching 20 degrees.

It was nice though, late spring’s usually the time of year where you crane your neck towards the peaks and wonder what the hell’s going on up there. Well, we’d been “up there” for a week. We’d seen a couple massive avalanche cycles, skied all kinds of snow, built some righteous kickers and gotten a true sense of what the mountains are like in May.