Hi All,
We climbed the North Face of Grays Peak today under mostly
sunny skies.
We brought hedge clippers, shears and flagging tape to improve
the access through the forested section. It could use more work (and more
flagging to fill in the larger gaps), but if others clip more alders as they
pop up from the snow it should stay reasonable. When you reach the
boulder field, it can be skirted on the left and by continuing up and left into
the trees you will find more flagging leading to forested ramps that swing wide
of the rocky waterfall slabs.
We had good travel on firm snow all the way to the Kokanee-Grays
Col, despite a temp of +7.5C at 5am in the parking lot. Above the col
(2540m) the low angle NE slopes were more sun affected giving foot penetrations
of mid boot to boot top. By 11am we were able to trigger small surface sloughs
on a steep E aspect and were plunge stepping to our calves with the occasional
post hole on the descent. The west facing snow below the col held up a
bit better, but we were wringing our socks out at the parking lot. Glad
we didn’t start any later.
Generally a fine day out with fantastic views and a
wolverine sighting (you don’t see one of those everyday). Looks
like some nice turns were had by the party that brought their skis up yesterday(?)
Note that there is a bit of a cross ditch just north of
Sunset Creek on the access road that took us by surprise and bottomed out the
car.
Enjoy,
Shaun King
Mountain Guide
www.mountainsense.ca
