Oboe Summit - December 30 2022
Fitzsimmons Range, Whistler, British Columbia
1956m
Picking up from Flute Summit, I set off toward my next objective along the Musical Bumps, Oboe Summit. Unfortunately for me, with the visibility being what it was (non-existent), and the signs apparently marking the edge of the park boundary instead of the route to Oboe, I wasted some time and effort going too far North, and had to backtrack. Thankfully, I picked up a skin track being set by a party of two now just ahead of me, and that made things a bit easier. My timing is a bit hazy here because my usual method of “check the GPX to find out” was ruined by using “ski mode” on my watch, which seems unsuitable for tracking skinning portions of a day. I would guess I wasted about 10–15 minutes doing this, a healthy mix of actually moving and checking my maps. Actually planning your trip in any level of detail beforehand can probably alleviate this.
Once I picked the real route up, it was only a couple minutes before I got to the point where the route steepened enough to be skiable instead of just skinning. This was where I made my biggest mistake of the day by not ripping my skins, and instead just skiing with them on. Why, you might ask? I wasted some EXCELLENT powder with awkward, hesitant skiing when I could've been having a total blast. It was still fun, just less than it otherwise might've been. The “run” lasted for about 120m of vertical. While I didn't go as fast or far as I would've skinless, I did at least get to feel good about not having to transition again once it ended. We even got a small break in the cloud cover at the bottom of the col.
Since there were people ahead of me for the trek up to Oboe, it was again not too bad of a climb. In a couple spots, when the clouds got thick, it was difficult to follow the track, but I got it done. By the end, I did get some hunger pangs, given it was 12:30 at summit time, and my breakfast was 2 Eggo waffles at 6:00. I had a sandwich in my bag, but 0 desire to stand around in the clouds+wind to eat it.
I was actually the first person of the day to bother heading to the summit from the skin track, as everyone else seemed to be heading toward the Kees + Claire Hut, and weren't particularly fussed about bagging the peak en-route. It seems that my trailbreaking was a sufficient motivator for a couple of women to follow before they set off toward the hut for the night, though, which was nice to see. They also offered to take a summit photo for me, which was nice.
I spent a few minutes doing that, and taking my skins off for the way down to the bottom of the col, then headed down. I was a bit hesitant to do so (ripping the skins) given my previous bad experiences in spring doing so and being unable to get them to reattach, but I told myself this was because of wet spring snow, and it should be fine, as plenty of people do it all the time. I especially didn't want to miss out on good skiing, given how much I regretted it coming down from Flute to Oboe.
Unfortunately, my plans were foiled by a lack of planning once again, since there's a lot less elevation difference from Oboe to the bottom of the col compared to Flute, and it's less steep, so I didn't actually get much in the way of good turns in. A couple were had, but the visibility was so bad I had to stop often to ensure I wasn't totally off-track.
Once that was over, I had quite the infuriating experience getting my skins “back on”. The quotes are there to indicate how tenuous their adhesion was to my bases. I think I need to get and use some more strategies for skin management (I have some skin wax, using it at some point is probably a good start) if I'm going to be getting into more tours where I actually put them on multiple times in a day. However, I did get them on enough to get myself moving, albeit with some cold digits by the end of the process.
The climb back up to Flute was quite an annoying ordeal. The visibility was total trash, there was no skin track to follow (might've been some downhill tracks somewhere, but I had 0 luck finding any), and I was acutely aware that there were options that smart people who plan things probably use to get down instead of back up from there. I knew Singing Pass was a thing, if not the nicest ski out, and some googling shows me the existence of a run to get you to the bottom of Harmony without having to get back up Flute. Oh well, while it was tedious, it wasn't actually that long, and I got back up in under 4 hours since I got onto the Peak Chair at the start of the day. Not a bad investment for 2 peaks.
From Flute, it was a simple skin back on the groomed track back inbounds. The downhill sections were interesting with my skins being very loosely attached to my skis, and resulted in one wipeout, but I made it back intact. Once I got back to a marked blue run under Symphony, I packed up and got ready to actually do some real skiing. There was still some good snow left there, which was nice, if short-lived. Since it was past 2:00 I had to go back to Harmony, which naturally closed not 10 seconds before I got to the line. Of course. A few minutes of tedious sideways skiing later and I got into the long last-chair line for the Emerald Chair, determined to get at least 1 run of downhill before the day was up.
The snow was pleasingly both soft and plentiful, and I even found myself some powder stashes on the way down under Franz's Chair. Past that, though, it was either icy or chundery, which was not ideal. It seems there was also a set of low clouds, as below 1500m visibility again went to about 2 metres, and I had a cautious ski-out to the thankfully covered vehicle, before heading home.
Overall, while the conditions and hastiness of the trip weren't ideal, I still got a pair of peaks and some decent skiing in for the day's effort, so I can't complain. 10/10 recommend doing these peaks as a tour. Even for beginning tourers this is easy work, and it can easily be made part of a larger traverse with a hut stay in the middle. As the party I met at the top of Oboe pointed out, it's probably the cheapest accommodations in Whistler!