Corn snow skiing on Stonecrop face.6/3/07

Aron, Nick, Ryan, Dave and I headed up the the Joffre Lakes area again in search of spring skiing. Our original plan was to ski the N.W. Face of Mt. Matier. Unfortunately we couldn't locate the second bridge across the river . It was either washed out or under a bunch of water. We car camped for the night and left for the Joffre Lakes trail in the morning.
It was easy walking due to the hard snow conditions.
Aron and I skied the Stonecrop face and the rest of the guys went over to Tzil. We ran into a couple from Leavenworth who had been up there for a few days.
Great weather and corn snow conditions for the most part. The face is maybe 50 degrees at the top and 45-40 lower down.

After we discovered the bridge was out there was not much else to do except enjoy the downtime.

BackCountryPunk taking a snack break.

View of the Stonecrop face. We skied down the right side.

Joining up with the two yanks.

Starting up past the first rockband.

Middle section of the face.

Up the final section.

From the top. There's a nice steeper section that is a great ride.

Aron making some nice turns lower down.

Sledding at Hurley and skiing at Matier 5/13/07

I had a full day of sun and fun this weekend. Mike and I started off by renting some sleds and going up the Hurley River road and on up to the Face mountain area. We are thinking about getting some sleds of our own for next year so we can get access to areas that have awesome powder skiing.
It was a fun time for sure.
I then left to go join A-Ron for an attempt to climb up and ski down the NW face of Matier. He had gone up there ahead of me and set up camp on the Joffre/Matier col. I was at the trail head by 4pm and the col before dusk. Got pretty beat up by the sledding so was a bit tired and slow and suffered leg cramps when I ran out of water, so had to stop and melt a liter.
A-Ron had a good time climbing and skiing the Ozzy couloir on Joffre. Fortunately the weather was perfect...sunny and warm. Unfortunately he forgot the sunblock and was in bad shape that night. The next morning we decided to leave early because his face swelled up. Check out the last photo for a good laugh.

What would have taken us a long day to ski in took less than a hour.

A lot of skiable terrain around here.

East side of Face Mtn.

Face Mountain.

East Ridge of Samson.

N.W. face of Matier just was our original objective.