Total Vert so far: 24,815m
After enjoying Sproat so much on my last visit around Xmas time I decided to go back again right after the first snowfall Whistler has had in 2 weeks. Despite having to break trail we made pretty similar time up the Rainbow trail, although we took a slightly different variation by continuing along the main trail for an extra few hundred meters before taking the sharp left to head up Sproat. Although only slightly displaced from the previous route, this route is vastly superior, much less steep with much more space in between each tree, allowing huge elevation gobbling traverses between each switchback. On the previous trip we had stayed in the open meadows below the west ridge, swung around the big cliff and approached the summit from the east. Although this was fairly simple I thought that climbing the west ridge directly looked like it might provide a slightly quicker route to the summit. On that trip Rob had voiced that he thought a long cliff band in the trees would prevent easy access to the West Ridge. I was determined to find out today. At first our approach was on the wrong side of the open glades, so we decided to climb out of the glades and then ski back down closer to the ridge. While climbing up and skinning out of a steep gully we set of a small avalanche, which carried both Benoit and I a few meters down the slope. The slide was about 10m x 10m and approximately 30cm deep. It ran about 30m. After noting the poor stability and adjusting our route accordingly, we skied a short way back down towards the bottom of the Ridge. The snow was dispassionately heavy and the terrain rather flat. It quickly became clear that Rob had been correct- the large cliff band above the tree line looks like it disappears in the trees, but in fact it persists, and it took us a good long while to find a spot where we could get above it. And even then it required some annoying boot packing and tree climbing. Then once on the ridge it was still a long and annoying with lots of micro terrain to work around to get to the summit. In conclusion... Go around the front... the West Ridge sucks! Once at the top the visability was pretty bad, but we found the line we wanted to ski, although the snow was pretty heavy and disappointing. The ski out was fairly uneventful, it's pretty easy from this zone, although we did lose the trail a few times as it hadn't been broken before us.
Benoit after being carried a short way by the class one avalanche on our skin up.
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