Steep Skiing – Lake Louise

After leaving the deep powder of Nelson, I made my way up through Revelstoke and over Rogers Pass to Lake Louise AB for the 18th International Hypoxia Symposium. A meeting of the best researchers in high-altitude medicine and any other topic pertaining to hypoxia. The location is chosen with the interests of attendees in mind and each day features a ski break after lunch before evening talks. I tried to take full advantage of these breaks and managed to get in a ski each day. Only slightly steep but fun nonetheless.

My first day out was a tour circumnavigating Fairview Mtn. through Surprise Pass. This takes you up gentle climbs on the South side of fairview and into the alpine. A short bootpack up aptly named Surprise Pass (you can’t see it until you are immediately below) takes you to a nice wide chute down to the shores of Lake Louise and a quick skate back to the Chateau.

During my tour, I noticed another, skinnier and steeper couloir leading from the ridge so on day two, my roommate Matthias Hilti joined me to explore. To save time (I spoke that evening) we skated across the lake and booted up the couloir. We ran short on time before reaching the ridge and turned back but had an excellent run down most of the couloir.

Friday, I squeezed in an interval workout (10min, 8min, 6min, 4min, 2min, 2min) and then hurried back to the meeting to present a poster from our trip to Nepal over the summer.

Early in the week, it looked like Saturday would be the best day of the week and the day where I could get away from the conference for most of the day. Stano and I made plans to ski the Aemmer Couloir on Mt. Temple – one of the 50 Classic Descents of North America. Unfortunately, a big storm hit all of BC and dumped 20cm of heavy wet snow on us. Instead of the Aemmer, I ended up going for an easy tour to the toe of the Victoria Glacier with another conference attendee.