Nick and I were actually planning on skiing a different peak today- one which we had spied previously on a fall-time trip to Tenquille Lake. As it turned out fate had other plans for us, and after some terrible/non existent map reading on our part, we ended up at the end of the wrong logging road. It all looks pretty similar in this zone thou; one big north face looks just like the next big north face, and it wasn't until we gained a ridge line almost 4 hours in and checked out position on Google Earth that we realised our mistake! Pretty unacceptable navigation from guys of our experience, but it ended up being a real treat. The north face of Ronayne is now firmly in my top 10 favourite runs of all time. The blower pow probably helped….
Enjoying some birthday cake at the end of the logging road, before we set of. 730am.
After half an hour of skinning on the road we get our first view of the Peak. At this point we thought we were looking at Sun God.
The peak is covered in uber-gnar features on all sides.
It took a good long while to wrap around the bottom of the face.
About 3 hours in. Still didn't know we were on the wrong mountain at this point!
Summit Stoke Selfie. Once we made it to the South West ridge (and realised we were no where near where we wanted to be) it only took about an hour of easy skinning to reach the summit.
Nick on the summit with Sun God Mtn behind.
The Summit was pretty cool, and we were able to ski right off the top with no problems.
Looking down the loooooooong line that we were about to ski.
2 turns in and I realised the snow was really something special…
The line was perfectly steep- I would estimate around 40 degrees, and the snow quality was beyond compare.
The line was nice and wide, so you could open it up and avoid your slough, but it still had big rock walls which gave it a couloir type feeling.
Needs no explanation.
Nick gives it some mustard on the big face. The line had no convexities, which meant you could see all the way to the bottom from the very top. This really helps with the confidence.
The snow quality remained high all the way back to the road at around 1400m. The snow quality in the Whistler area was not holding up so well at elevations this low during the week.
A quick bushwhack though the forest and we were back on the road for an easy glide back to the car. Six and half hours round trip, one of my favourite days skiing ever.
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