Climbing the convoluted path to Lookout Col. Photo by Patricia Hughes

The one unusual feature of the lodge is that tour buses pull up every morning. Just as you are heading out the door, swaddled in fleece, Goretex and balaclavas for a day in the backcountry, dozens of Chinese tourists descend onto the premises. They buzz through the gift shop and loiter in the parking lot, snapping photos of each other and the snow plow, and picking three-foot long icicles off the roof and brandishing them like swords. The effect of this unlikely culture clash on skiers is, at first, confusion. Why is there a line at the restrooms? Who are these people? The second response is relief, that it is not you who must pile back onto a steamy diesel bus to spend the day watching mountains from behind a tinted window.

The second day it continued to snow so we headed back up the Balu Pass Trail toward the treed ridge below Ursus Minor. The peaks here are all named after the bear: Ursus Major and Minor, Bruins, Grizzly Mountain, even Balu is a relative of the Hindi word for bear, Bhalu, as in the character Baloo in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. All the real bears were hibernating. The only wildlife we saw in four days was a black squirrel, an American Dipper and some chickadees.

We climbed to 8,000 feet and stopped in a howling white out before my nose and fingers turned into permanent popsicles. Ursus Minor materialized another thousand feet above, and would have made a terrific day-program on a clear day.

We stripped our skins and folded them into our packs, had a quick sip of hot tea and pointed the skis downhill. We slid dreamlike down fluffy and knee-deep powder, through the trees along the ridge for over a thousand feet, which turned out to be too far, because we stopped short at the top of a 20-foot cliff. We had to carry our skis and kick down a steep gully, then bushwhack rightward to find our uphill track.

We climbed back up, and met a pair of randonnee skiers heading for the summit of Ursus Minor. We watched them plod upwards, kicking a trail into the wind-packed slope. On one hand, I wanted to go with them and bag that peak. On the other hand, which was frozen again, I was glad not to. The snow layer above 8,000 feet didn’t feel quite right. It was less consolidated. We are as goal-oriented as any mountaineer, but this felt like too much of a gamble. (The randonnee pair made it back safely).

"People wonder why I don’t ski at a lift area, and this is the reason. The absolute beauty of mountains like the Selkirks..."

We happily skied near the ridge for two more runs, then dropped back onto the trail just as daylight started to fade. The clouds lifted and by the time we crossed the parking lot to the hot tub, the sky twinkled with a million stars and promised a cold, clear night.

The backcountry ski commandment is "Thou shalt not be late on powder day." Consequently, we were up early on our third morning. With a foot of fresh snow and clear skies, this was shaping up to be one of those picture-perfect days that has made Roger’s Pass famous around the world.

But first we had to get the van running. While we were braving the cold weather, our 1994 Volkswagen Van was not faring as well. The battery went on strike after sitting for two days in the cold and we had to coax it to life with dry gas, a jump-start and a long warm-up.

We hopped in place while we waited and considered what we would get to replace it once we returned home. Torn between a fuel-efficient commuter car and a rugged fun-mobile that would guarantee more gnarly vacations, we tried to conjure the perfect hybrid SUV. But as soon as the Volkswagen engine caught, we dropped the car-shopping fantasy and returned to the serious business at hand of our ski vacation.

We drove two miles west to the Illicillewaet trailhead. Destination today: Sapphire Col, a nearly 5,000 foot climb. John Kelly’s essential book Ski Touring in Rogers Pass describes this col as a "common destination but one often thwarted by poor visibility and strong winds." There are also numerous crevasses and exposed blue ice, but these we avoided by staying under the ridge to the right.

The trail climbed easily through open forest for two hours, then emerged into the meadows, where finally, we hit sun. We sat on our packs and ate banana bread with cream cheese and hot tea and didn’t need mittens for at least three minutes. It was glorious.

At the Mousetrap, the climb broke off from Asulkan Hut trail and zig-zagged under Mount Abbott and The Rampart Ridge into shade and cold wind. Mt. Sir Donald and Terminal Peak sparkled in the brilliant sun to the left. After four and a half hours we reached the top, a gentle plateau leading to the crest between Castor Peak and The Dome. The wind miraculously stopped and we had the summit all to ourselves.

We could see it all - white-capped peaks in every direction. The Hermit Range that contains the Ursus mountains rose to the northwest, the Asulkan Hut perched below us and the Selkirks glistened to the south. It’s possible to drop over the col to The Dome and follow the Loop Brook trail out, but we wanted to ski the smooth and open slopes we had ascended.

The ski down was effortless: a perfect pitch through the sweetest line of bowls and dips. My quads gave out before the snow did, and we rested often, luxuriating in the quiet afternoon and the freedom of the hills. People wonder why I don’t ski at a lift area, and this is the reason. The absolute beauty of mountains like the Selkirks comes at a high price of exertion and years of practice and training, but I couldn’t picture a more beautiful place than that sunny slope on that particular day.

We dropped to the upper meadow and reconnected with the Asulkan Brook Trail. The ride out was up and down along the Asulkan River (where I spotted the dipper), and decorated with golden-pink alpenglow which chased the peaks and ridges above us. Quite a bit of "paddling" was necessary to exit the flat trail, but I welcomed it as the effort helped to keep some feeling in my toes.

Having successfully explored the two major areas of Roger’s Pass, the final day was icing on the cake. By this time our confidence was significantly higher because we knew the area better and what to expect from the snow conditions. That was a good thing, because we ended up climbing a steep, overhanging gully to Lookout Col on our last day.