Revelstoke: Rogers Pass Trip Report
First ski of the season and first winter camping of the season
Tuesday morning Dan and I showed up at the Roger’s Pass Visitor’s Center ready to pick up our backcountry permits at 7 am MST sharp! To our surprise, the center was closed. We looked back on their website and found a footnote that they operate in Pacific Time. Sounds like an excuse to sleep in to me…. we waited in the parking lot for an hour and then got our permits.
When we first started the tour, I bustled with anxiety. I didn’t want to leave the warmth of the car and genuinely struggled to remember why I’d subject myself to a camping trip in the winter in the middle of nowhere in Canada. Slowly but surely, with each step, I gained a little more confidence and shook off a little more anxiety. I remembered my therapist Wally reciting the quotation, “A day without anxiety isn’t worth living.”
Dan and I veered off the route we decided on pretty quick, which brought me back to one of my favorite past times: dicking around in the woods. (My buddy Andrew and I found a way to stray off route on every single one of our tours last season). At this point, I feel more comfortable after departing from plan because it not only allows but encourages improvisation. We weaved our way up a river that still hadn’t frozen yet (global warming!) and eventually crossed it by “tree skiing” (skinning over buried tree branches).
We finally worked our way back to our planned route after about a 5 hour detour and ended up getting to our campsite with plenty of time to spare. We stomped out a platform with our skis, work-hardened the snow with our boots (packed down the snow), and pitched Dan’s luxurious Hilleberg tent (built for polar expeditions). We ended up getting set up in time to go on a scouting mission for the next day.
We checked out a crazy ice cave and Dan taught me about how to navigate a glacier with crevasses. We returned to the tent soon, and got started melting snow. Dan brought water treatment, so we didn’t have to boil the water, which allowed us to save some time and fuel. For dinner, we had freeze dried camping meals plus an avocado I snuck up there. Spirits were high and our bodies were warm.
I was so warm in fact that I felt guilty for not being colder during winter camping. The weather was extremely temperate, it probably only went down to the 20ºFs even though we camped at almost 8000 ft. I got up to pee twice in the night and barely cooled off either time, which almost felt like cheating. Typically, when it’s really cold, you want to stay in your sleeping bag once you get in, and you can use a pee bottle. I’ve also heard of people sleeping with a Snickers bar to eat in the middle of the night because the extra calories add warmth.
In the morning, Dan was able to get the weather report from his Garmin In Reach (hot take: modern technology makes winter camping way better), and it looked like it would clear up throughout the day. We discussed either doing the “Seven Steps to Paradise” or just some fun ski laps near our campsite. The Seven Steps to Paradise is one of the “Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America”, which was quite tantalizing, especially with the optimistic weather report. But we would have had to traverse the entire Illicilliwaet glacier to get to the descent, which presented considerable hazards this time of year when the snow bridges are still weak.
Last season, I talked to Wally about my desire to avoid finding myself in situations with higher risk than I was comfortable with taking. With his help, I changed my goal for a typical day in the outdoors from “have the most epic day possible” to “have the safest day possible.” With that goal in mind, it was easy to vote for doing laps near our campsite, which conveniently aligned with Dan’s vote. We packed up camp and went to ski. The first run was awesome! It snowed through the night, so we had some fresh powder, and the terrain was fun and safe.
Alas, contrary to the weather forecast, visibility got worse throughout the day, and we had a real quest on the way down. Lots of careful navigating (kudos to Dan for leading that) and slow going through pillowy terrain features.
We finally got out of the woods around 6 pm last night ready to start selling Canada tee shirts “Canada: a little further north, a little colder, a little bigger.” We got dinner at the Craft Bierhaus, which has an entire section of its menu dedicated to mac n’ cheese including a bacon, maple syrup, and chicken mac n’ cheese. This is the kind of restaurant that could only exist in a mountain town. The restaurant was filled with young good-looking people, which got me thinking… “Wow I’d love to be able to visit more of these ski towns on my adventure.” The baby jogger would be pretty slow going and steer me more towards rural areas with less busy roads, but if I do my adventure on a bike, I’d probably be able to visit a good deal of ski towns across the west this winter. The “Big Adventure” plan continues to evolve!
