Gray Creek Pass Ski Traverse

Dirt, mud, slush, rain, and even some patches of powder

Apr 08, 2024

Before leaving Kimberley, Léo 10 gave me chocolate Easter eggs for the run from his personal collection. How nice!

He and his family (Bertrand, Vanessa, and Lucas) biked over Gray Creek Pass in the summertime when he was 8 and Lucas was 6. I had no idea how long it would take me, but i figured i could use their trip as a general proxy. Two small kids biking (Léo with paneers) vs. solo guy running/ skiing? Maybe we’d come out about the same. Their family covered roughly 34km day one, 24km day two, 7km day three, and finished with 31km after coming over the pass day four. Judging by their times, i guessed that travel would get increasingly harder as i got higher. The map also showed the road gradually steepened until finally reaching the pass. With that in mind, i packed lots of food and set a target of reaching the pass in two days (prepare for the worst, expect the best).

But first Turkey pot pie from Two J’s Bakery in Kimberley. JJ, who owns the cafe with her husband, said, “Let me get a selfie with you. You’re going to be famous!” That gave me a nice confidence boost before setting off. And the pie was heaven.

DAY ONE

Run on the left, ski on the right.

✅✅✅

I met lots of nice supportive people and dogs on the way out of town

Phew it’s April 2 😅

Around 5pm, I reached the snow covered road, about 36 km (1180m) in with 30km remaining before the pass. Running is much faster than pulling the baby (stroller) on skis. My target of reaching the pass in two days assumed the snow started higher up. I thought I’d now be lucky to reach the pass in three days. I also worried about the softness of the snow. Warm temps and slushy snow would make the sled more difficult to pull.

After eating dinner, instead of setting up camp, I decided to switch to nocturnal and keep hiking. I hoped that temps would drop below freezing at night, and skinning would be quicker. I could also increase my odds of getting to the lead in two day if I skied through the night. Finally, I wouldn’t have to worry about bears stealing my food if I was awake and moving.

Shortly after embarking on my evening journey, something extraordinary happened. I heard a voice, “Mom I found him.” Often times i hear and see things that aren’t there when I’m alone in the backcountry especially at night, so I seriously doubted my ears. Nonetheless, I turned around and saw a teenage boy (Max) trudging through the soft slushy snow. Soon after, a young girl (Serafina), his sister, followed through the thick slush. And finally their mom (Brodi) and dad (Dom).

Backtracking, I had two conversations earlier in the day that stood out. First, a man stopped and said, “i saw you running through a snowstorm on the Icefields parkway.” He had to stop because he just couldn’t believe it when he saw this guy running through a snowstorm pushing a baby jogger wearing swim trunks. Later, in the day, a woman stopped with her daughter in the car and said her husband called her and told her he just passed the guy they saw running on the Icefields parkway. We ended up chatting for a few minutes. They live off grid outside of Kimberley and had been driving home from Edmonton when they passed me. She gave me yummy Easter chocolate, and I told her my info so she could find me online.

This same family returned to find me that night at 8 in the evening!! Brodi said their family finished dinner and were talking about me and decided let’s try to find him. They all hopped in the truck and drove down the road as far as they could. When they couldn’t go any further, they decided, let’s just walk down the road for a bit and if we don’t find him no problem. They said, “you got so far!” That instantly zapped me out of thinking i was hopelessly far behind.

They told me I had a real effect on them when they passed me running on the Icefields parkway. They first saw the baby stroller tracks and then saw me in a swim suit. They were thoroughly perplexed but correctly guessed that I was on “some sort of journey involving running and skiing” (in fact that could be the literal tagline of this adventure).

I told them of my plan to go to Nelson after getting to Kootenay Lake. They told me there’s a town they go in the summer in the opposite direction called Kaslo that’s worth visiting. From Kaslo, you can run over a mountain pass to New Denver and do backcountry skiing directly off the highway. They said Kaslo is a really cool outdoorsy town full of hippies and draft dodgers. That sounded amazing to me. We took a selfie, they gave me a goodie bag with hard boiled Easter eggs, ramen and cash, and said goodbye. With that, I set off into the night jubilant and refreshed: I had an exciting place to look forward to after the pass and no longer worried about being behind. This was the first time anyone has chased me down like that after three months of adventure, I must’ve been as surprised as they were when they first passed me on the parkway. What an amazing family!

(I’m here in Kaslo now and can confirm it’s a magical place. I’ve also been in touch with Brodi, and she wrote that she and her husband Dom would have ventured into the pass to find me off they didn’t hear from me.)

i hiked on my skis for an hour and a half and then got sleepy and happily ditched my idea to switch to nocturnal. I was in my sleeping bag by 1am. Almost immediately after I got in my tent it started raining for the rest of the night. Lucky me!

DAY TWO

I woke up groggy at 7 am to get going.

I looked at animal tracks all day. (On solo trips in the backcountry, I can feed two birds with one scone in practicing my singing and scaring away bears. The downside is that I rarely sight any wildlife. Hence, all we have are the tracks)

Top row: hooves on the left (moose or caribou?), five clawed paw in center (otter or weasel?), ill-defined paw on right (fox?)

Bottom row: four or five-clawed paw (maybe also otter?)

I tried a new configuration on the sled. The night before I found it very hard to pull the heavy sled through the soft snow, and it tipped over constantly. I decided to carry my big heavy backpack on my back and then just put my ski pack on the sled with my stroller wheels face down to make it light and keep it from tipping.

no shortage of water. Endless streams and springs coming off the mountainside.

After an extremely difficult day trudging through soft glopppy wet slush I finally got to the section of the road that starting climbing into the alpine. I have never in my life worked so hard for so few miles (under 12). At some points where the snow was especially soft, it took me an entire hour to cover one kilometer. The sheer physical intensity of this day might surpass the effort I’ve given on any other day of this adventure.

DAY THREE

Overnight, temperatures thankfully cooled drastically, and it snowed through the night.

i tried another new configuration for the sled. On day two, it stopped tipping over, but the stroller tires created too much drag in the snow. I flipped the stroller so the tires faced up and hoped the sled would remain stable.

This worked! By far the best configuration! Third times the charm.

With the snow finally frozen and my efficient sled, I finally moved at a good pace without too much physical effort. I also inferred that the snowstorm would make bears less likely to try to steal my food.

For the first time since leaving Kimberley, I got into a flow and let down my guard a bit. In this relaxed state, the song, “You are my sunshine,” popped into my head. As I sang, for the second time since leaving Seattle on January 1, I started balling my eyes out. I just couldn’t stop crying. The idea that someone, a human, could give someone else sunshine on a day like this— dark and snowy and thick with fog, with no sign of the sun, made me cry uncontrollably. It brings me to tears as I’m writing about it. I heard my mom’s voice singing this to me as a child and cried that she could find sunshine in me.

One signature of this adventure was the constant problem solving prompted by learning a new mode of transportation (sled pulling), equipment failures, and ever-changing conditions (sun and slush —> rain —> cold and snowy)

Even on this day, as I moved faster I snapped my sled rope twice. The first time I simply tied it back together with a double fisherman’s and kept going. The second time I actually thought about why it snapped and realized a sharp edge of the sled shredded it. I took out my knife and smoothed out the edge and tied another double fisherman’s. By the time I finished, I was cold from standing still. I raced uphill to warm up, but within a couple minutes, the hill started going down. I checked my map and sure enough I’d gone over the pass without noticing. I quickly tossed on my other jackets and finally smiled that I made it after warming up.

Dig a platform and set up camp. Ski in ski out 😉

I skied down the pass a couple hundred meters and found a nice little spot off the road to set up my ski in ski out luxury private suite for the next couple days.

DAY FOUR

Time to go skiing! It dawned on me that I knew almost nothing about the backcountry skiing up here. I spoke to one person on the phone named Mark who said there would be two obvious ski options from the pass. But either there was too much cloud cover or I was distracted by the rope snapping and never noticed obvious open slopes. Nonetheless, I looked on my map for 25° north-facing slopes and identified three candidates.

I set off towards the most promising of the three slopes.

Imagine my surprise when, after days of walking over animal tracks (and snowmobile tracks), I stumbled over human tracks! A beautiful, faint yet unmistakable, human skin track. I excitedly followed it.

Inspect the snowpack. 2 meters deep up here!! Looks pretty darn stable to me. Snow is “right side up” (hard to soft from bottom to top), consolidated, heavy, does not propagate as far as i could tell

At the first open slope, I dug a snow pit. The snow felt rock solid. So firm that I felt confident about skiing a bit steeper than I normally do if the option to do so arose

The skin track eventually led to a wide open, rolling low angle slope. I climbed to the top and got 360° views of the area including my destination, Kootenay Lake.

The ski down was unfortunately quite crusty. Some patches of powder turns here and there amidst a sea of sun and wind-affected snow.

Why do trees grow in clumps? According to the Internet, they have more defense against wind?

In the alpine, spruce and firs dominated the landscape. Lower there were lots of western red cedars.

Sleep comes easy after an honest day’s work

Yes that’s tape on my mouth because far better than waking up covered in frozen drool

DAY FIVE

Time to ski out!

i woke up to heavy snow, which continued all day.

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over! Even going downhill, the soft wet floppy snow made for a real effort to push through.

Let’s drag this sled to the very last patch of snow

to my surprise, the snow on this side of the road descended to 980m, just 5km from Gray Creek. That’s an easy downhill run out.

Welcome to the west Kootenays! Wait a second… could it be that I’m return’d to the great and mighty Pacific Northwest? Western red cedars… lush streams… wet…wet…wet.

One of the joys of traversing mountain passes for me is that each one is like a mystery box. You never know what you’re going to get on the other side, but likely the climate and ecosystems will completely change.

a sign of civilization

The nice folks at the Gray Creek Store helped set me up for a successful visit to Kootenay Lake. I bought sausage rolls, candy bars, and a fishing rod. From there I ran to the ferry and camped by the terminal to catch it the next morning.

Time to catch dinner (hopefully ) 🎣