Slalok Mountain - April 13 2025

Joffre Group, Pemberton, BC
2653m

After skiing Mount Taylor the day prior, seeing how good sheltered, northern aspects were skiing, and that there was a broken trail up Slalok, I knew that had to be done next. Logan has been working on his ski skills this winter (at least in the last month or two), and had done a few tours in my absence, so he felt ready to tackle a more interesting ski objective. So, he drove up Sunday morning, and we set out for another Duffey peak on this fine transitional weekend. We started a bit earlier for this one than the previous day, now that my body was adjusting back to the normal schedule, and we managed to get moving a bit before 9am 🙂

This time, we took the trail as opposed to skinning across the first lake, as the previous day it was just barely acceptable on a colder morning with a day less of sun on it. We did encounter a dirt patch early on, but otherwise it was skinnable (though, like the previous day, and many others, it was icy and firm enough ski crampons would be wise, and walking with spikes or boot crampons even wiser, probably).

The trail was a bit icier than the previous day, so skinning up without ski crampons was a bit harder than the day before. I stubbornly managed to do so, but Logan was apparently less willing to struggle up for no good reason, so between lakes 1 and 2, he gave in and put his on, even carrying his skis in a few sections. I was happy to play the masochistic game of "let's see if I can manage without the gear I have in my backpack and could easily get out, and probably save energy by doing so".

We made the upper lake in basically the same time as the day prior (80 minutes), but this time, since we had a bigger mountain, and Logan is a stronger uphiller than my party from Saturday, we just pressed right on across the lake, and started climbing up the pre-broken track up Slalok.

Annoyingly, the skin track was a bit torn up on the other side of the lake, but once it started making switchbacks up the moraine, the snowshoers apparently found their own way (much appreciated), so travel was fairly easy. We took a short snack break before we headed into the shade under the face, then otherwise tried to keep making steady progress up. As we moved, we noted that the line was not nearly as difficult-looking as expected based on what we read, and that even the tight-from-afar side-chutes looked pretty fun (though Logan, as he is still learning, was still aiming for the wide central line). Our biggest concern was that this was an even busier day than Saturday, and we wanted to make sure that we got to our line before too many parties skied it 🤣

As we got onto the glacier, we were happy to find that parties seemed to have split up amongst the objectives nicely, with a few heading towards Joffre/Matier, a few for Spetch/Hartzell, and only one or two above us heading for Slalok.

There were only a couple switchbacks to get from there onto the ridge, but boy were they long ones... It took us about half an hour to wrap around and get onto the ridge. Logan apparently was talking to the snowshoe party going for Spetch+Hartzell, and halfheartedly tried to yell hi, but they were too far away. I was just happy to be staying ahead of a couple parties below, and that the skin track was broken nicely to just walk onto the NE ridge, as that was the steepest-looking part of the mountain on the way up.

We took another snack break, this one a bit longer (>20m), once we got onto the ridge. It was also time to put our skis on our backs for a bit, as the ridge is decently steep and narrow here, so skinning isn't really an option. Thankfully, since we had someone break trail the day prior, and had another party ahead of us already, it was an easy walk up for us.

The booting was over pretty quickly, and soon enough, we were putting our skis back on to finish the walk up. We were still a bit under 4 hours into the day at this point, and already above the summit of Taylor, which took over 5 hours to get the day prior, so that was pretty nice. Not having to break trail, having someone more fit than you to keep you pushing forwards, and having the motivation of needing to beat others to the line helps a lot with getting up fast!

My tracking got a bit messed up in this section, so I'm not sure exactly what our pace was like, but it took us another 40 minutes to skin from that point to the base of the summit, which felt pretty efficient. We got pulled to a false summit near the top as we followed a track too far to climber's left, but it wasn't a big deal, just a couple extra steps.

Once we got to the flat spot just below the summit, Logan decided he'd ditch his skis there, but I do enjoy skiiing off the summit if possible, so I figured we'd delay topping out by a few minutes (otherwise would've put us at 4.5 hours to the top) to transition ahead-of-time, and got out of my skis, ripped skins, and prepared for the mini-booter to the top. It was short enough that you could just carry them in-hand, at least. On the way up, we were worried about whether or not it might be icy enough to merit extra traction, but it ended up being pretty easy to just walk up in the pre-set boot track.

Between transitioning, photos, and just enjoying the great weather, we spent about 20 minutes on top, but were motivated to get down before others joined us on the way down, so didn't linger for too long.

Skiing off the true summit was a novelty, just a couple steep turns on churned-up snow, but hey, at least I can say I did it 😄. Once I got off the top, Logan took a few minutes to get clicked in, and we started to make our way down. For the section above the couloir, the snow was too enticing to ski slowly, so we decided I'd ski to the decision point where we'd have to make sure we found the right entrance, and Logan would follow there. I enjoyed some pretty excellent turns, happy I brought my bigger skis, and waited for Logan to follow.

I ended up waiting for about 10 minutes for Logan to come to me after the first bit of skiing 😅. Turns out he somehow lost sight of my tracks, and wasn't sure which way to go. Guess no matter what, if you wanna ski out-of-sight (there was a rollover) of people, "just bring the radios". Once he found me, just before I was about to take my skins out and start walking back up, he exclaimed relief at how easy the run was given the expectations other reports had set, and we continued our way down.

With the warm temps, and a bit of new snow on top of a more-settled snowpack, there was some sluffing, so I gave Logan a crash course in how to manage that (which he picked up quickly, at least with the easier "ski slower than it" methodology he defaulted to), and we continued our way down. I didn't get to rip down the entire thing in runs long enough to set my legs on fire, but Logan did wayyy better than any previous time we've gone touring, so it looks like his practice paid off! We skied long enough pitches to have fun, and he barely even wiped out on the ski down! Super happy to see that.

As we got closer to the end of the run, snow chunks started to show up on top of, or buried in the snowpack a bit. These were pretty sturdy and could knock you around a bit, but thankfully no wipeouts were made in the making of this descent 😄. I did have to get a little more intentional with my turns, though.

All in all, excluding the 10 minute wait after the first bit of skiing, we got down to the lake in 15 minutes! You could do it even faster in a party of more confident skiers. I love when the majority of the mountain is just a great, consistent ski run. Such a good feeling. I pitched the idea of heading up for more laps, as the snow was still good, and it was only just past 2pm, but Logan wanted to call it while he was still winning and head down, so I obliged, and we started crossing the lake.

After 10 minutes of skating across, shedding some layers, and making the short walk to the high point between the middle and upper lake, we skied down to the second lake. Logan did better than expected in the tighter, icy trail, though there was still more pizza than a Panago at his feet 🤣

There was the usual short walk up from the second lake to the high point before the longer descent down to the first lake, and we clicked in once more. There were quite a few hikers on the trail, so Logan was taking it pretty slow, but to his credit, he did keep skiing down all the way until the icy stairs, where he decided to call it.

We split up at that point, as I was feeling regrets from when I didn't ski down past there on the way down from Taylor, so I wanted to keep skiing. There were indeed quite a few hikers, but they weren't too hard to avoid. Despite these skis being my widest at 108 underfoot, they can still hold an edge when they need to. I got all the way down to the open avalanche path, where there is a small uphill, and managed to carry enough momentum through that section to be able to keep my skis on and just Nordic up the remainder of the uphill. From there, I managed to ski basically to the bridge on the far side of the lower lake that crosses Joffre Creek. Not bad for April!

Having got that far on skis, it was only a 5-minute walk back to the car! I took my time packing my gear up, shedding my last layers, and putting some earphones in, and to my surprise, Logan had decided walking was for suckers and skied most of the way out as well, and he caught up while I was transitioning. We walked back out together to an absolutely packed trailhead, where the parking lot was now full, and people were illegally parked on the highway (not cool, btw). Apparently tourist season is already in full swing!

All in all, this was a fantastic day. Easy ascent, beautiful views, awesome skiing, and we only walked a few minutes on the way out. Plus, we got back to Pemberton in time to have some Fried Chicken Sandwiches at Town Square (would recommend), and still drove home in the daylight! Can't get much better than that. I absolutely recommend this peak, as a ski. Pretty awesome time.

GPX Track + Map