Million Dollar Couloir

Feb 6, 2024

Eager to get out skiing the promise of blue skies and stable avalanche conditions lured us into trying to ski the widespread boilerplate crusts from the recent pineapple express.

We left Vancouver early headed for the Duffy and Cayoosh Mountain. After the drive up, we had our skis on heading up the trail just before 8am. The first section along the road was easy fast travel along icy crust. Soon it deteriorated, being steep, icy, and narrow due to the thin refrozen snowpack. We found ourselves having to boot some sections till we arrived to the treeline.

Arriving to Cayoosh’s E glacier we donned harnesses and started zig zagging our way up the glacier. Despite the open crevasses we opted to travel unroped feeling confident that the boilerplate melt freeze crust would support us over any hidden snow bridges.

After skinning to the top of the E Glacier we booted up the notch that separated us from the NE glacier. Due to the slow travel through the forest it was already 1:30 in the afternoon, we opted to skip on the now foggy summit and prioritize the time for Million Dollar Couloir and a likely heinous ski out. Once on the NE glacier we popped our skis on and were welcomed with spectacular low angle glacier turns. About 20cm of light snow rested on top of the bulletproof crust making excellent skiing. Soon the glacier steepened and the glacier became heavily crevassed, here we traversed skiers right off of the glacier gaining a rocky ridge. We followed this ridge until it dropped down into the couloir.

The top section of skiing down the ridge was wind stripped and bullet proof. Here there is a short section of no fall skiing. Despite not being particularly steep I held my ice axe in one hand as the edges of my skis skittered down the crust. I radioed back up to Nicole to describe the conditions. Very reasonably she opted to pop on her crampons and boot down the ice. After this the ridge opens up into this small bowl which then tightens/steepens into the couloir. In this upper bowl the turns were spectacular, skiing that same 20cm of light snow we had on the glacier. Once it steepened your skis were forced down to that crust but was still quite decent with the layer of new snow on top. Down towards the exit it got quite variable.

After exiting the couloir we were faced with a lot of wet loose debris and icy travel through the thinly covered forest. We had to cross a couple drainages to make it back to the road. We made it back to the car by headlamp at 6pm.