Burn Out Ridge

Yannick and I have long been toying with the idea of hitting up some new terrain. We figured that in order to get high enough without going to The Pass we would have to do an overnight. Bam! The idea was born to head up the Malakwa area and find our own little piece of paradise! A couple hours on google earth and gps in hand we started skinning at 8 pm Friday night. Unfortunately for us, we managed to hit the new arctic air flow bang on so temps we a little chilly, though not bad when you were moving. Head lamps on, we cruised up about 600 m gain and dug out snow shelter for the night. Since neither of us have good winter bags (mine is a -7 down) we brought Tess and my old bags to double up. It was sweet! Super warm even though we figure temps dropped to the -15-20 range. Only the nose got cold. Anyway, some porridge in the morning and covering the camping gear in the tarp, we started upwards to gain what we now call Burn Out Ridge. The snow was solid with only 5-10 cm penetrations and anything remotely south facing was crusty. We made our way up a cut block (which was a sweet ski later) and up an amazing burn forest that will be sweet to ski one day when it is not sun crust!!! Perfectly spaced trees, nice long pitch. Just as we gained the top of the ridge, we broke through the clouds and were graced with the sun! It was colder up there but the sun made it well worth it! We scoped all the surrounding terrain and planned out our next couple trips to the area. There is tonnes to hit. I boot packed one mini summit for some cool pics, unfortunately the skiing sucked, but the potential is there. We then dropped the north bowl and had an awesome 800 m run back down to the cut block. With some daylight left, we skinned back up the ridge, this time staying on the north side and ski some more awesome terrain and finished with the fun cut block back to the logging road. Quick stop at the Burner for a recovery meal and back home for Saturday night. Great time!

Note: We just started our 1/2 Iron programs last week and swam Friday morning before work/school. 2400m in under 24 hrs kicked our ass! Fatigue from the week was felt, and we definitely have work to do if we want to do a 10'000 ft day this spring...hmmm! Along with the burn forest this brought on the name....Burn Out Ridge.