Bonnington Half Traverse (Grassy and Steed Huts)

To kick off the Christmas holidays, we headed to the Kootenays to explore the Bonnington Range. Due to the technical difficulties of doing the whole traverse (car drops etc.) we decided to save a bit on gas by just do an out and back to Steed Hut, stopping at the Grassy Hut on our first night and on the way back out. We drove from Fernie, arriving at the Bombi Summit on highway 3 around noon. There were lots of sledders out and about, making the ski into the hut really easy as it was basically groomed. We followed the alternate directions into the hut by following the forestry road instead of going directly under the powerlines. It was a much more efficient way to get in, I highly recommend it! After passing the East Munson spur (just after 6km on the logging road - all the km's are marked), we turned right onto the next spur, following it up into the woods towards False Grassy. The book said that it was 9 km into the hut, but our GPS said we actually traveled 10.9 km. The climb up to the ridge was surprisingly steep, but once we got up there, it was easy to find the hut thanks to all the tracks from the guys that had come in the day before us. Having a GPS is a good idea - looking in the hut log it seems like it can be pretty tricky to find.

Skinning up the forest service road at 2:30 on the shortest day of the year!

Egypt Lake Shelter via Healy Pass Nov 30/Dec 1

I have been following Alex Wigley's blog (http://skitheory.blogspot.ca) for the last few months and a recent post really resonated with me. It was 10 tips on how to have the best season ever. One of the tips was to do one hut trip each month. With this in mind, we realized that November was about to end very soon! It was looking like the one hut a month challenge was going to be over before it had even started due to poor snow conditions and a lack of ski buddies that wanted to go ski hardpack all weekend. Resigning ourselves to a day touring trip, Kyle noticed that there was a Parks Canada shelter very close to our destination. Somehow, the stars aligned and we grabbed some of the last spots in the hut for the night of November 30th. I guess the challenge is back on!

We had a relatively leisurely start of around 9am from the Sunshine parking area for a ski out to Healy Pass with the CSMC. We had a big group of 10 plus a dog, but it also had not snowed in a while so we weren't too worried about getting fresh tracks. The trip was more of a nice walk in the woods with skis on.

Leaving the sunshine area en route to Healy Pass with the CSMC