Eldorado Cabin - March 4-7/2011

A 4-day ski trip to the Eldorado Cabin in the Southern Chilcotin, west of Tyaughton Lake.

Five of us - Brian, Dave, Kate, Ken and I flew in to the Eldorado Cabin for a 4 day ski trip. The trip had actually supposed to have gone the previous year, but was cancelled after the group prior to ours reported triggering slab avalanches on 20 degree terrain and left after a single day. The owners of the cabin were nice enough to let us keep our deposit and apply it to the following year, and so here we were.

We stopped in at Tyax Heli-Skiing for beta the night before flying in and one of the guides told us that there had been over 120cm of snow in the last storm, which had settled to about 60cm or so below tree line. It was all layered on top of a faceted wind crust, which would prove touchy for the whole trip. But while treeline and above were touchy, stability below tree line was quite good. Happily, we went back to our chalet, cooked dinner and prepared for the next day.

Friday morning we flew in, met the previous group, and headed out for a ski. We started with the Cabin run on the West facing slopes above the cabin, but soon moved on, trying to find the North facing runs "behind the ridge" that the previous group recommended. We gradually gained confidence in the snow pack, which, while touchy, seemed, as predicted, reasonably stable in the trees. We eyed a particularly steep West facing run with a short open slope leading to trees below. As we gathered near the top, the windlip on the ridge whumpfed and the slope slid away beneath us. Oops.

Chastened, we dialed the aggro meter back several notches and had a great time for the rest of the trip.

Although we kept mostly below tree line for the whole time, we managed to get a bunch of great skiing on all aspects, with our favourite runs being NE and NW facing runs off the ridge at GR703448 (NAD27).

Our last day was warm and sunny and we yoyoed the mellow slopes east of the cabin before skiing out via the Spruce Lake trail, which held snow all the way back down to the car.