Surprise pass trip report
Orange you glad I didn’t say banana
Weirdly, I was colder last night than on any night of the Icefields parkway run. I thought maybe I got too lax now that I’m back in civilization, but I checked the weather and it reported a temperature of -6°F, so maybe it was just cold. No wonder I barely slept. In one of my brief stretches of sleep, I dreamt of my cat Lucky aka “Cleopatra”. I was elated to see her, and she smiled at me. I woke up crying a little bit (but not too much cuz my tears would freeze on my face), and I remembered she died last year.
I think she may have been the first thing I ever loved unconditionally (like a parent). She was a terribly unfriendly cat most of her life, but she liked to sit near the people she liked. Much of the time she sat in a nook in the cleaning closet.
After the warden reminded me to pay for my campsite, I took a shot in the dark at the last minute, is there any chance you know about ski touring in the area? He said, “I wrote three guidebooks about skiing here.” Wow, I just googled him and he wrote the Confessions of a Ski Bum books, which I’ve read! Wait holy crap. I thought that guy was being an asshole for making me pay $30 to camp after freezing my ass off last night and not even having a license plate to fill out in the registration form. Now it turns out he’s my favorite ski author since I got to Canada. His guidebook is excellent.
Well, he gave me some stellar info today despite my almost writing him off as a ball busting narc. Hence, I decided to investigate Surprise Pass.
It’s likely the most classic ski tour in Lake Louise with beautiful views the entire way. I’d been hearing about it since Jasper.
You can see the Lake Louise Ski Resort across the valley.
I almost had a heart attack when I saw this skin track going straight up to the cliff. Luckily this wasn’t surprise pass.
View going up the pass
View of the ski from the top of the pass. You can see the beginning of Lake Louise at the bottom right of the run.
View looking back up
Tourists!
Tomorrow I’ll head to Kootenay National Park. I went back and forth all day about whether to head to Canmore or Kootenay at the next fork in the road. Canmore would involve much more running on highways with trucks but seems like an unmissable place where many legends of the adventure community live. Now I know where I’m headed when I return to Canada. I’ll be in the backcountry until Thursday or Saturday or so, depending how much skiing I do in Kootenay National Park, so there will be no blog posts the next few days.
over and out ten four