In the Summer the Black Tusk is one of my favourite hikes. Since we have been suffering through summer like temperatures recently I thought it might be interesting to try it on skis. My usual preference in the summer is to bike up the microwave tower road, but seeing as that road is unplowed all the way from the highway that seemed like it would be a very long approach. We figured skiing down that way might not be too bad thou, so we decided to start at Rubble Creek, go up and over the tusk and then down the microwave road.
We got dropped off at Rubble Creek and started boot packing up the very dry trail at about 730am. After about an hour we switched to skinning, which wasn't really any quicker on the refrozen snowshoe trail, but was nice to get the weight of the skis off our backs.
It took about 2.5 hours to make it to Taylor meadows and we picked up a skin track from a recent campsite there.
Vince Skins through Taylor Meadows
Vince skinning up with Mt Garibaldi and Garibaldi lake in the background.
From the Meadows we aimed to roughly follow the regular summer route, although I think we ended up being a bit too far left, but this didn't matter at all as travel through the open glade was super easy.
After about 4 hours we were skinning up the scree slopes on the back of the Tusk
Once we made it to the ridge we switched to crampons, the snow was heavily rimed.
Looking over Helm Creek towards the resort.
Blackcomb getting dwarfed by Wedge.
Vince approaches the bottom of the chimney
The lowest part of the climb was the sketchiest on the way up and down. Neither of us have a lot of experience dry tooling, but we knew we didn't want to take off our crampons as we could see a lot of snow and ice higher up.
As we got higher and the snow got thicker the climbing became easier, probably easier than in the summer in these conditions, but I'm sure it can change a lot throughout a season.
The final part of the climb is quite exposed, but the snow was consistent and seemed trustworthy.
Standard summit stoke selfie. Total time from the parking lot 6.5 hours. Travel was generally fairly quick and easy going, but we ate a bit of time with transitions plus stashing the skis at the bottom etc.
How Sound catching the afternoon light.
Mt Fee and Brandywine
Suprisingly there was no wind on the top and it was nice and warm so we spent almost an hour chilling out and taking photos.
We considered rappelling for the last part of the down climb but it was hard to find any good anchor points.
The snow on the scree slope on the way down was pretty affected, but fun all the same.
Not too many people see the Tusk from this angle, near the microwave towers.
Vince skiing down
there is some fun looking terrain a little further over. Anyone skied that open couloir?
Back at the towers and fully stoked. Skiing down took a little longer than biking down, as it was pretty slow going on some of the flats, but from here we were back at the highway in 2 hours, making it a 10.5 hour day all told. Totally love it up there, summer or winter, the Black Tusk is a firm favourite.
