Homathko Part 3

Homathko Part 3

We had an auspicious start, with two solid days of good weather that saw us well established on the icefield. However, it quickly became unsettled again, a common feature of the weather in the Coast Mountains! We were often able to make distance across the icefield, but it was always too poor for downhill skiing.

Occasionally storms would pass through and we’d be woken by the tent flapping and vibrating in the gale. We built high walls from snow blocks to prevent damage to our thin nylon and aluminium shelters, and once we were safe we opened the whisky and lit our pipes, broke out the books and the iPods and enjoyed some downtime. Roger built an igloo as the latrine kept filling in with snow, but before we ruined it we had a Scotch and Christmas cake party inside, happy to be both a) out of the wind and snow and b) standing up!

Eventually time grew short enough that we had to think of leaving we had a boat to catch and so we used our Yellowbrick beacon to request a forecast. Fortunately a break in the weather was expected so we holed up, kept digging the tents out and waited for the sun…