Homathko Part 4 – Leaving the Icefield

Homathko Part 4 – Leaving the Icefield

Given the sustained bad weather we’d been sitting through, we were surprised when the forecast came true and blue skies appeared. It took a long time to dig everything out of the snow, but eventually we were packed and bid farewell to the igloo. The 2-3′ high ridges of snow that had built up between the tents were impressive and showed a fair amount of snow had been moved around during the storm.

We were starting from Sasquatch Pass, where we had left our food cache on the flight in, and figured three days to be a reasonably generous amount of time to get to the Franklin Arm of Chilko Lake, where Roland Class was going to pick us up with his boat.
Immediately after cresting the pass our first obstacle was the Alph Glacier, which passed surprisingly easily despite a steep serac band. Ahead lay the final hanging valley, guarded by very steep slopes. We stopped early in the day so that we could tackle these slopes in the cold of the morning when avalanche risk is much lower.

The second morning we climbed into the hanging valley that would give access to our exit route, swapping skis for crampons on the steep and hard snow. By late morning we found ourselves looking along the long ridge leading to Snowsquall Pass. Our plan was to reach the pass and drop onto the Stilly Glacier by the evening, but below us a series of ramps beckoned invitingly.

We made the decision to get onto the ramps an into the final valley floor as quickly as possible before the sun made the slopes too soft. What followed started as a worrying crossing of big, steep and heavily loaded slopes  but ended as the only good downhill skiing of the trip; good soft spring ego snow allowing long lazy turns despite the steepness of the slope. We then had some fantastic easy angled tree skiing into the head of Nine Mile Creek and, we thought, the trip was pretty much done. Turns out those final nine miles would be the longest of the trip! More in Part Five…