The ski into Elfin Lakes hut was nice. It started with a straightforward and mild climb on a wide trail up into the alpine. Here we found the Red Heather day use shelter and stopped for a snack. With heavy packs and a group of five it took us 1.5 hours to reach this point. The Red Heather shelter is nice. It even has a wood stove and fire wood for those looking for a spot to warm up!
After a short lunch we carried on up from the shelter to gain Paul Ridge. From this point the route becomes more of a series of random skin tracks heading all over. Very nicely Parks Canada has installed large orange trail markers to guide one in the right direction. The markers lead right to the Elfin Lakes hut. This was nice for us because the higher up we climbed the more whiteout it became. By the end of our journey we could only just make out the next marker from the one previous.
We arrived back at the cabin just before 1700 to find dinner was prepared by one of our group members. The best! We spent the rest of the night melting snow for water, chatting, and socializing with another group in the hut. I was in bed with ear plugs in by 2100.
The next morning I awoke to the rustling around of people in the cabin. It was around 0645, a respectable time to wake up. I went outside to discover that the visibility was absolutely perfect and watched as first light hit the Tantalus Range and Mount Attwell. I began melting more snow for breakfast with another group member. We all sat and enjoyed some oatmeal and hot coffee before suiting up for the day.
We departed the cabin around 0900 with mild, sunny weather. We descended from the cabin on a freshly made skin track from the group that left before us. We were careful to make sure that we didn't descend too low into Ring Creek. We made a traverse across the hillside, dipping down into three creeks and using the third to ski down into the Ring Creek basin. We chose to keep skins on here... Looking back we should have just skied. At the very end there is a steep step that requires skins off, so why not enjoy the whole descent? I hate carpet skiing...
The climb up to gain the Bishop Glacier wasn't too bad. It wasn't steep enough for full heel lift and no switchbacks were necessary. Just an easy climb up onto the ice field. When we crested onto the Bishop Glacier the sun came back out and opened up the views all around us. It was absolutely glorious. Finally we could see Mount Garibaldi as well as all the surrounding peaks: Mamquam Mountain, Attwell Peak, The Tent, Diamond Head to name a few.
We worked our way up beside the Sharks Fin and transitioned. Here we had a nice ski down to make out way towards the Sentinel Glacier. It was great skiing other than the occasional wind lip. We had one last short climb before our descent towards Garibaldi Lake. The climb was very mild, but seemed to take longer than expected on tired legs. It was around 1530 by this point.
We began the chore of turning snow to water not long after dropping our bags. This proved to be a very long and arduous task that went on for hours in order to make us enough water for dinner, tea, and water bottles for our sleeping bags. I was thankful we had the tiny hut to do this in. The occasional breeze throughout the evening was uncomfortably cold. We went to bed just before 2000 and I had a long and restless night.
There was some discussion as to what would be the fastest method to cross the lake: Skins on or skins off in cross country mode? I went for a combination with one skin on and one off. It proved to be very efficient and I was in the front of the pack. We stopped as the lake makes a bend towards the summer campsite, which is about half way. Here we had a quick snack and water before carrying on.
We headed down through the outflow of the creek from the lake. This was a bit tricky and made for some interesting maneuvers to get around obstacles along the creek. We eventually crossed Lesser Garibaldi Lake and Barrier Lake and let Todd go to scope out if the Barrier was skiable. He did not think it was safe so we very unfortunately joined back up with the Rubble Creek trail and the crowds to get back to the parking lot. Truth be told the snow coverage was not bad on the trail and I only ran into about half a dozen groups. A bit scary when you are making tight turns on ice and run into people coming from the other direction... About 300m from the parking lot the snow became sparse and we decided to walk in our ski boots after each sustaining a few new scratches to our skis. Once we hit the road we were able to put skis back on and make it all the way to the truck. We arrived at around 1400 and headed back to Squamish for truck retrieval and victory pizza and beer at Backcountry Brewing. What a success!! If I was to do this again I would like to do it in a single day or do a full traverse up and around Black Tusk and out Cheakamus Lake.