Every day, I wake up, and I think, oh no.
A fellow skier on a multiday backcountry ski trip in Yoho National Park shared this thought with me, but I could have said the words myself. (She was kidding, but there was a kernel of truth in there.)
What else runs through your head when you wake up in a frigid log cabin to a wind chill near -40 C, where the air is heavy with the condensation of a dozen other people’s breath? When your body is sore from dozens of kilometres of uphill skiing with a heavy backpack? And when you know the morning walk to the outhouse will make your eyes feel like they’re freezing?
You may ask why anybody would want to be in an environment like this. In fact, the 14 guests on this week-long trip paid almost $3,000 each to be guided by Sawback Alpine Adventures through the depths of Banff and Yoho national parks.
The answer is simple: There’s no substitute to experiencing skiing and hut life, bunking up in what can be described as an off-grid hostel that acts as a jumping off point for mountain adventures, in such a remote corner of the Rocky Mountains. The views are serene and dramatic at the same time. Hiring guides, meanwhile, is your best bet to stay safe through treacherous mountain terrain.
Our stay at the Stanley Mitchell Hut – a log cabin 23 kilometres away from any accessible road, requiring 11 hours of skiing to reach – was actually a compromise from our original plan to complete the Bow-Yoho Traverse, in which we’d cross high-altitude mountain passes and crevassed glaciers on skis for nearly a week from Alberta into B.C.
Ski traversing is a method of backcountry travel to access some of the deepest mountain environments around the world.
But blizzard conditions in the days before our departure made avalanche risk too high to cross many parts of the planned route.
You’d be hard pressed to find much disappointment from the skiers on our trip, though. The crowd included first-time backcountry travellers and those with years of experience, but everyone shared the same sense of awe in this vast valley, where glaciers, sheer cliffs and pristine slopes surrounded us.
A climb of a few hundred metres with our heavy packs left us sweating toward the end of the first day. I was told our cabin would be in a clearing, and found myself praying it would appear at each small gap in the trees. Relief washed over me when I finally saw the structure.
Life in a hut is a truly special experience. It isn’t luxurious, but we had a small common room with a fireplace, a kitchen with gas burners and no running water and a couple of rooms where we all slept face-to-face.
On expeditions like ours, the guides help facilitate daily life and plan out the food supplies, but the guests are in charge of cooking dinners, cleaning dishes with buckets of water and ensuring the space is kept clean (a hard task when you cram 18 exhausted people into a confined space). For drinking water, we collected large buckets of snow from around the cabin and boiled their contents to make it safe for consumption.
When we first met, the vibe was a little standoff-ish but by the end of our trip, the atmosphere was downright merry. The trip had brought together people ranging from a group in their 20s from Colorado to a party celebrating a Québécois friend’s 60th birthday. Everyone was laughing it up with each other as we cooked and ate together. Countless games of cards were played as we huddled around little gas lamps.
Our lead guide, Christian Schlumpf, said the group dynamic always progresses this way. “You meet at the beginning, it’s a little bit awkward, everybody’s a little nervous about the trip,” said Schlumpf. “But I know at the beginning that in like four days time we’re all going to be best friends. It’s pretty neat how that happens in that environment.”
Guides at Sawback Alpine Adventures bring the food on hut-to-hut trips, while guests bond as they do the cooking and cleaning up.
Part of it is the close quarters. But there’s also the one-two punch of relief and excitement each time we returned to the hut after a day of skiing. Relief because we made it back safely. Excitement because the day had been so surreal that we couldn’t believe how privileged we were.
Our guides started and ended each day huddled around the fireplace, discussing how wind, temperature and snowfall were affecting avalanche conditions. These minute details helped them make decisions about which slopes were safe for us to ski and which were at higher risk of avalanches.
The first couple of days involved very gentle and low-angle skiing through trees, which help anchor the snow and prevent large avalanches from developing.
By the third day, conditions had remained stable. We climbed higher into the valley and approached a slope that made for the steepest, most open and most fun run of the trip. The snow was incredible – chunks of cold powder slapped my face on the way down, giving me a rush of adrenalin.
At the bottom, those of us who had already descended saw a plume of snow appear at the top of the run. An avalanche.
It was a small slide – none of us at the bottom of the slope were in danger. But it covered the top of the run, and for a moment our guides conferred through walkie-talkies to try and ensure everyone was safe.
Eventually, a radio call came in from a skier in our group who was still at the top (and who thankfully had a walkie-talkie as well). In a shockingly calm voice he said he was buried. He was fully encased by cement-like snow but managed to punch out an airhole.
A guide at the top rushed over and managed to dig him out within minutes. We were all shaken but were incredibly grateful that he, and the rest of us, were okay. Avalanches where the victim is fully buried can be fatal.
At the cabin that night, our guides discussed what happened. The avalanche started on an isolated cliff above the run, and was likely triggered by our activity below it. It was a reminder of the severity of our environment that week.
We planned to take it easy for the rest of the trip – there was only one day of skiing left before the trip back to society.
Everyone skied the next day, albeit in much more mellow terrain. That night, the cabin celebrated the 60th birthday on the trip with a surprise cake. Someone pulled out a flask of whisky and a joint to celebrate our last night in winter wonderland.
The ski back to the trailhead tested me. Parts of my gear started failing. Pain in my Achilles tendon kept me slow. I was the last to arrive at the finish line and was greeted by the group cheering. I was crushingly tired, but it still made me smile.
When we finally said our goodbyes and I got in my car to start the long drive home, everything felt foreign. It was weird to be in a car. And after five days in close quarters with the same 17 people, it was downright strange to be alone.
It sunk in how surreal the trip had been. Not just because of the skiing, but because of the way our group bonded in conditions so drastically different from those in our everyday lives.
If you go
Hire a guide. Ski traverses are complicated and require years of expertise in avalanche safety, backcountry navigation and glacier crossing skills. And good weather is never a guarantee. We travelled with Sawback Alpine Adventures (seven day trips from $2,995, discounts for Alpine Club of Canada members).
Expect the trip to be challenging. Consider doing smaller backcountry day trips first. Having some backcountry knowledge may make your journey more enjoyable.
Backcountry specific skis and snowboards can be rented. Other crucial items include good wool base layers and a couple of pairs of gloves.
The writer was a guest of the Alpine Club of Canada and Sawback Alpine Adventures. Neither reviewed or approved the story before publication.
