Hudson Bay Mountain Backcountry Skiing, Smithers, British Columbia, Canada
Mike and I had just taken a few days off after finishing a week long hut trip at Burnie Glacier Chalet outside of Smithers, and we were ready to go for a mellow backcountry ski. Avalanche danger was considerable at all aspects and all elevations and the avalanche problems were a persistent slab and deep persistent slab. These are two avalanche problems that for me suggest staying in non-avalanche terrain. So a mellow tour it was.
It was our first time in the area and Hudson Bay Mountain had a nice, mellow tour option. This mountain also has a ski resort on it that only operates a few days of the week. We were looking to tour on a Monday, when the mountain would be closed, so we wouldn’t be able to get a chairlift bump to cut off some vert from our tour. Thankfully, the ski area itself isn’t too big so skinning up the resort was pretty quick and easy. Once we found ourselves at the top of the resort, we contoured northwest across what is called “The Prairie,” which is an area that is flat with no distinct terrain features that would be very easy to get lost on in a white out. Thankfully, we had a bluebird day and navigation was quite easy.
We soon approached the south/southeast face and began skinning up it. We made our way up to the ridge where we found a rather large cornice overhanging the other side. We made sure to give the cornice a wide berth. We made our way to a spot on the ridge where we had a great view of the South Summit and realized that the whole ridge was either lacking snow or was wind affected. We decided to skip going any higher as it would probably be more of a ski boot hike than a skin/ski and we were looking for a day focused on skiing, not objectives. We took a few moments to hang out and take in the pretty views the bowl to our north afforded. Then we turned around and skied back down the face we had just come up and continued down on a run in the resort back to the parking lot where our car was. It was a great day out that allowed us to clear our minds after the mess the trip to the Burnie Glacier Chalet was.
Total Stats: 5.7 miles, 2200 ft of elevation gain
