Icefall Lodge

Perfect timing! That has to be the number one bonus about our trip! We hit the storm snow with the mild temperatures just before the deep freeze! So close that the morning we flew out we were hit with -23 and Tess was nauseous from frozen feet.

The whole week was amazing. The storm snow from when we arrived was 55 cm and since we were the first group of the year, everything was as untouched as it can ever get! Over the week we had about a meter of snow and temperatures from -4 to -7. The skiing at Icefall is steep and fortunately for us deep as well. The cover was decent for early season though many small spruce trees still made for some twitchy skiing at times. We ventured slightly into the alpine in the poor vis only to hit shallow rocks and I had an epic crash into a mushroom that I did not see at all. Tess followed it up with a repeat and double ejection!

Fortunately we squeezed one sunny day in where we could venture high and get some amazing views... Truly impossible to explain in words so I guess you just need to see the pictures.

We had an awesome Kelowna crew consisting of Ian, Tess, Mark and I that put in some serious vertical (~1500 m per day) which felt solid for early season. We had also some great camio appearances from fellows skiers at the hut and the whole group was certainly a riot. For a more detailed trip report you can check out Mark's take.