After a prolonged discussion with a charming young man from Parks Canada, I finally managed to convince him to let me book into the Egypt Lake shelter (despite the fact that the snow would be bad, and I couldn’t know what the conditions were like despite having got info from someone who’d toured there recently, and I was going to be crossing avalanche paths despite the fact I wasn’t actually going that way, and I was going to be eaten by bears, and blah blah blah I know they must deal with a lot of idiots, but he honestly didn’t listen to a word I was saying).
Through the trees
So we set off towards Healy Pass from the top of Wa Wa lift at Sunshine – taking the easy way in, because we’re lazy like that. And the snow was lovely! Especially in the trees as we dropped down closer to Healy Pass. Closer to the pass was a different matter, as everything got all sun-crusted and manky. It wasn’t warming enough to create good corn snow, instead it was just breakable crust and thoroughly unpleasant. Thankfully we weren’t skiing down it yet, and the far side of the pass towards Egypt Lake wasn’t quite so bad.
A Whiskey Jack (aka Gray Jay) – they live year round in the snowy coniferous forests instead of migrating. And are very good at stealing food from humans.
Downhill through gentle trees all the way to the hut, as the mountains behind it loomed larger and larger, then finally across the bridge over the creek, and collapse. Thanks to the scare campaign run by Parks, no-one else had booked in and we had the place to ourselves (or maybe everyone else has moved onto climbing and biking, it is Spring after all).
Snow started falling not long after we arrived at the hut
Being a terribly basic ‘shelter’, the hut doesn’t have cake tins, stoves and sinks. So it’s pretty much like an Australian hut, except with more room. We got the wood fire going, and spent the rest of the day eating.
Having fallen asleep not long after 9pm there wasn’t too much of a sleep-in, but Sunday dawned looking brilliant, with blue skies and a fresh snow coating over everything. And so we skiied out.
Egypt Lake Shelter the next morning – beautiful blue clear skies and warm sun
Pharaoh Creek (a tributary of Redearth Creek, which goes all the way back down to the Highway 1 – we thought about going out that way, and then remembered how patchy the snow would get as we got lower, and decided against it)
Up to Healy Pass
The weather wasn’t looking so nice from up here though, so we thought we’d get a move on
The Ramparts, looking spectacular
We decided to go out via Healy Creek, hoping the snow coverage wasn’t too bad. In the end it was ski-able all the way back to Sunshine, although we ended up on a narrow strip of snow bounded by dirt by the last kilometre. Most of the way down we were following a set of animal prints walking along the trail in front of us, identified afterward as a small black bear (we weren’t sure at the time, they were just so small, but a bear is the only animal that matches the toe/pad configuration).
Me, looking like I’ve got a pudding basin shoved down my front (also wearing ridiculous sunglasses as I lost my other pair)
