We planned to ski below or on Rae Glacier, but once we got to where one could see the valley below it we turned right around. It was blown completely clear of snow!


Who'd want to ski up there?

Arnold, Damian, Carl, Doug and Bill at Rae turnaround point

Arnold descending Elbow Lake trail

Damian descending the Elbow Lake trail

We had lunch at the Elbow Lake campground and discussed our options for the afternoon and decided to try the slopes above Arethusa Cirque. The access is about a kilometer south of Highwood Pass. We were back on skis by 1:00 on a good access trail.

Heading up to the good stuff

In fact there were already six other skiers on the slopes. And we found very sweet powder on open south-facing slopes on the north side of the cirque. While we were five tele skiers with one alpine tourer (AT) last week, this time it was four for AT and only one tele. The coordinator had planned to tele but his new AT skis were ready on Wednesday afternoon and so he "switched to the dark side". On the first run down he had more difficulty than he expected on the new equipment. At the bottom of the run he found that he'd left one skin on! Things went a lot better on the second and third runs.


Bill showing how powder should be skied

Doug on his tele gear

Carl on his new AT skis

We had time and energy for three runs on the slopes, it was too bad that we didn't start here, because there were quite a few more slopes that we could have skied. We were back at the cars before 4:00.

Thanks to Arnold, Bill, Damian, and Douglas for joining me and persevering after a disappointing morning, Carl (C/S). Thanks also to Cathy and Eric who met us at Elbow Lake as we had lunch and pondered what to do. They had skied Arethusa (where we were already thinking of going) on the weekend, and confirmed that it was well worthwhile.