The Big Howie (Almost)

February 16-17, 2024

The Big Howie couloir takes a proud line down the NE face of Mt. Howard. It starts at a notch in the ridge, goes down a steep couloir for about 300m then opens up onto a small pocket glacier before making it’s way through a series of cliff bands for a total of 800m to valley bottom. It is a beautiful and intimidating ski line.

We started off the night before, leaving straight after work to try and hit better weather. We skinned in through the dark after driving up to the Duffy. Planning to stay the night at Keiths Hut. The air was crisp and the night was full of stars. We headed up through the forest and then through the whopping Joffre landslide. With the tree cover removed, we turned off our headlamps and skinned through the boulder field by moonlight. The snow was covered in large surface hoar crystals and sparkled like the stars. We arrived at the hut around 10:30 with Ryan and Darrion meeting us shortly after. Lucking out with only two others at the hut, we quickly head to sleep.

The next morning we headed off from the cabin at 5:15. Our planned route wrapped over Vantage col, down past the NE face of Mt. Howard, across Twin One Lake and back up to Mt. Howard from the south valley. Our goal was to time passing by the to view our line with the blue hour before sunrise so we could get an idea of whether the line was even in shape with the low snowpack. Our route wrapping around to the south valley was much lower exposure then booting up or heading up the complex Twin One Glacier. However it was all at the cost of a lengthy skin.

After passing by to view the face we skied down to valley bottom. We skinned along twin one creek and lake as the sun slowly rose, igniting the sky. Wrapping around into the neighbouring valley we headed back north into the and up into the alpine.

The skin up took longer than expected. The hard wind affected snow made kick turns and side hilling precarious. To save time we decided to skip the summit and head straight to our primary goal of skiing the couloir. We could see three notches side by side, all of which looked like they could hold the door to our line. A debate ensued, I was almost ready to put money on the left notch, but Ryan was 100% on the far right notch. His confidence was far more than mine and he persuaded the rest of us in heading directly to the correct notch.

Getting to the notch, we donned our harnesses. I stabbed in my skis as an anchor and belayed myself to the edge. Probing I found where cornice overhung. I sawed and shovelled a refrigerator sized block down into the line. Clearing out the couloir and our path in. Darrion broke off another piece next to mine. We set to digging a large snow bollard which would serve as our rappel anchor into the line. I backed up the snow bollard with my skis as the others rappelled over the cornice into the line.

After we all rappelled in. Darrion volunteered to go first. We watched intently as he skied much more tentatively than usual. After skiing 100m down he radioed up that it was very icy. Below the chalky snow at the entrance of the couloir he had found hard bulges of alpine ice left bare from the thin snowpack. Some of it barely holding an edge. Being a very serious line to ski in such condition we decided to bail and pull the plug. This was by the farthest into a ski line that I had ever bailed.

Thankfully we had decided to leave our ropes up until we had confirmed that it skied. I ascended our double ropes with my prusik and guide mode device. I tentatively squirmed my way over the lip with my ice axe, not wanting to bounce on the snow bollard. I backed up the bollard once again with my skis and set to getting everyone else up. Since it was so awkward ascending over the lip I figured it would be fastest and easiest to belay everyone as high as they could climb then haul them up the rest. Luckily we brought a few pulleys with us to make an efficient 3:1.

Once we were back out of the couloir we popped our skis back on and headed back down, following our skin track. We would have to circumnavigate back around to Twin One lake. Bailing meant we were gonna have a long skin back to the hut. We skied the tricky and variable snow back out, then skinned back up to vantage col as the sun set. After grabbing our things at the hut we skied back to the cars by headlamp. All in all a 16 hour day. We will hopefully be back another time to ski the couloir, but probably not until at least next season.