[MCR] Rockies: Sunshine Backcountry / Healy Creek to Twin Cairns

Hi Folks

Went up Healy Creek toward Twin Cairns and out the Sunshine Ski Area on Saturday, December 5, 2015. Our route was up what I commonly call the “waterfall pitch” which is more commonly done as a descent route from the Sunshine backcountry. This is after the Wizard Chutes but before the Simpson Pass route described by Chic Scott in Ski Trails and is “Complex” (ATES rating) and complicated terrain requiring solid routefinding, navigation and avalanche travel skills.

Treeline and below, the height of snowpack (HS) varied from 60 to 120 cm. The travel up the Healy Creek trail was a packed trail and easy travel. Seemed to be less than 1cm of new snow (HN) since the last time anyone traveled the trail and we were the first on the packed trail that day. When we left the Healy Creek trail at the first major slide path we had to cross Healy Creek. This required taking our skis off since the creek was wide open. This was an easy shallow crossing.

Once we started breaking trail the snowpack was mostly supportive with ski penetration of about 20cm. Since the snowpack was so shallow there were a LOT of natural hazards and deadfall issues that I had never experienced before in the 7 or 8 times I had done this trip previously. This made the travel in the forest and creekbed particularly tedious since a lot of the deadfall had to be circumnavigated and the creekbed was not well filled in in a number of places.

At about 2000m we started up on steeper terrain. I noted that the upper 15 cm of low density snow overlying the midpack was sluffing very easily and didn’t seem very well bonded. Foot penetration at this elevation was essentially to ground. It was still an early season shallow weak snowpack. Didn’t investigate to see if surface hoar was in the mix here but I certainly had seen a lot of surface hoar the last time I was around Sunshine a week ago. In the protected areas in the trees I certainly took it for granted that it was lurking.

A bit of a surprise at this elevation was that when I dug down a bit I found the mid-pack to be moist.The base of the snowpack (basal layer) was quite facetted as one would expect in the Rockies in December. We didn’t see, hear or feel any cracking, whumpfing, shooting cracks or hollow sounds below treeline.

When crossing the one real smooth planar avalanche slope we encountered below treeline we took full avalanche precautions and travelled one at a time. I understand that the avalanche hazard below treeline was rated as low but low hazard doesn’t mean no hazard! Even a small size 1 slide would have given us a serious beat-down since there were so many early season boulders, stumps and deadfall waiting below.

On the actual waterfall pitch the trailbreaking was heinous due to the variability. I figure that we took an hour more than average to cover the more interesting terrain from the creekbed to the top of the waterfall pitch.

Upon breaking out at treeline we immediately noticed moderate wind drifting things around and a drop in temperature. The moist snow we found lower down was not found at treeline or in the open higher up.

Looking at a lot of the backside exits from Sunshine Area north of Wawa Ridge I was immediately struck by how thin and wind affected the common ski lines were. If anyone were to ask, I would say don’t bother with any of these lines since they were mostly rock studded. In addition any place you did find some snow would probably be a windslab over the basal facets.

The backside run on Twin Cairns was completely wind hammered by moderate to strong winds with a LOT of rocks sticking out everywhere. Not a place for a good board or set of skis. The front side was simply wind scoured and a rock fest. I didn’t find any of the major lines on Twin Cairns to be attractive at this time of year.

At just after 3PM we saw three snowboarders boot-packing their way toward Twin Cairns. They were breaking trail up to their knees or deeper and their progress was exceptionally slow. Not sure where they were going or if they persisted but it didn’t look like fun!

Synopsis: Early season conditions and a shallow Rockies snowpack with surface hoar now hiding below the new snow.

Play Safe
Cyril Shokoples – Mountain Guide



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