14th of August 2010 - Mt P to Guthega via the South Paralyser
Tony Scruff and I were looking forward to a bit of BC skiing on Saturday, especially Scruff who had only skied on the resorts before. We were held up waiting to hire some AT skis for scruff and we only started skiing at 9:30 from Smiggins. We quickly got to the summit of Mt P and enjoyed the views. The snow was dry on Eyre and we were hoping for more than the frozen, crusty or softening conditions we expected. We were not disappointed.
We skied from Mt P down to Betts Creek in stunning dry snow up to 20cm deep. Scruff and I were hooked by snow snakes but the snow was too good to care. We put on our skins and headed up to the Southern Paralyser, scruff struggled with his kicker skins (too narrow, damn hire gear), so I set a shallow skin track which did not need heel risers (I haven’t done that since about 1998). The run back into Betts Creek was great, firm and grippy wind buff on top with 15cm of dry snow lower down.
We had planned to skin up to the Paralyser proper but the weather came in, so we decided to skin to the Paralyser North Ridge and then drop into Farm Creek. As we headed north the Snow turned from dry or wind buffed to icy or corn. By the time we hit the North Ridge we were in 15cm of deep corn. After some more good turns we crossed the new bridge, skinned up to Guthega Hotel and had a well earned beer each before we skied back to Smiggins
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The snow was epic and Scruff is hooked on BC skiins. What a day.