Elfin Lakes in Winter

A few months of dreaming of snow and a few days of winter gear collection and finally we managed to organize a winter overnighter. Emails were sent to a bunch of potential parties and the group was formed. Me, Sophie, Dominique and Jeremy would snowshoe up. Cang would try out a split board. He and I would snowboard down some runs together. Phil and his group would use AT skis.

We woke up to a dreary rainy day. It was dark and foreboding of a miserable weekend. We paid no attention to the rain however and were determined to go. Five of us were split into two cars with loads and loads of gear and Phil and his buddies in a third heading up separately.

The gravel road up to the trailhead offered no resistance to our cars: a Honda Civic and an Acura Integra. At least so we thought until we reached the big hill right before the trailhead, which just happened to be the beginning of the snow line. A few meters up the hill and both our cars started sliding backwards. So we quickly retreated and parked our cars. While we were getting ready a bunch of other cars passed by (including the one Phil was in), attempting the same maneuver unsuccessfully.

A few minutes later we had our entire gear ready, packs on our backs (snowboard on my pack), snowshoes on our boots and we were on our way. The rain had stopped and the weather was just cloudy with the occasional snowflake coming down. The trailhead was a short distance away and we were happy not to have to extend our trip by too much.

There wasn’t too much snow on the first switchback and it was pretty hard packed. Not much need for snowshoes but the crampons on our MSR Classics made things safer all the same. I was pretty energized to start. Couldn’t wait to get up there and my pace was rather quick. Cang and I were leading ahead (although Phil and his group were already way ahead of us as they were quicker to start and had a faster pace).

We took a ton of breaks for water, the occasional snack and a pack adjustment once in a while. I hadn’t used my 90L pack since the summer and had forgotten a few details on how to adjust it and so nearly all the weight was on my shoulders rather than my waist. Didn’t bother me too much to begin with, but the farther we went, the more I felt the agony. It started with a pain in my right shoulder that felt like a needle was being pushed through and spun around. Later the pain spread more equally to my entire upper back. I should mention at this point the amount of weight I was carrying: a mere 28kgs (62 pounds) or 44% of my body weight. I have recently been hearing stories about the loads the Sherpas carry, which are between 40-60kg, or near 100% of their body weight. I had been quite curious how they do it. So the weight I was carrying was perhaps an experiment…either that or I didn’t realize how much my snowboard weighed…either that or I was trying to impress my girlfriend with my great manly strength…uhm… Needless to say that a quarter of the way up I was exhausted and in great pain, wishing I could dump the snowboard over the nearest cliff.

I continued on, ignoring the pain and trying to change the focus of my mind to other things. It mostly worked and we all finally reached the Red Heather shelter. We took a longer break, repacked Jeremy’s pack, which was lopsided and was giving him a hell of a time, took some more pictures and were in awe at the great crowds around that place. Here we were to enjoy the solitude of the outdoors and were surrounded by people.

As soon as we started getting too cool we decided to continue on our journey. For some strange reason I was convinced that we were past the tougher, steep part. I had done this trail before but always with a much lighter pack, so the next part always seemed easy. It was not easy. I was struggling like I had never struggled before. Every few steps or so I had to stop, rest my shoulders on my poles to take some of the weight away and allow myself to breath deeper breaths. It was a long struggle up and I was always thinking: “we’re almost there…almost at the peak from where the trail goes down”. We past the part that I thought was the winter trail (or the bike trail) and then I had a surprise. The winter trail it seems goes all the way on the eastern side of the hills…a route that I wasn’t familiar with. It is a much more avalanche safe route but it’s also much more hilly…much more up-down. So since I wasn’t familiar with it, I could not judge how much we had left to go. And it went on and on and on…my pack felt like it was getting heavier and heavier. After a while, I was beaten.

About three quarters of the way to the lakes the trail opened up and start going downhill. I dropped my pack, put the pack on the snowboard and tried to drag it. It didn’t work very well. I then tried sliding on it. It didn’t work very well either. Ended up sliding right into the deep powder…making it many times more difficult to get out. I was feeling pretty beat-up at this point. Didn’t want to lift that monster onto my back anymore but I didn’t see any other way. I was way too close to give up. Sophie offered to carry my snowboard and after a few convincing arguments I decided to give my pride a rest and allow her to help me out. She carried the snowboard the rest of the way and with my load reduced I no longer had any problems going on.

We reached the hut after about 5 hours, set up camp between the old Norwegian hut and some trees. The views around there were magnificent. There were fields of untouched snow and big dark clouds moving slowly through the mountains. You couldn’t even tell there are two lakes there.

We warmed up in the hut for a bit, dazed by the billions of people that were crowding it. We ran into Phil and company in the Hut who had decided to sleep there (rather than do the bivouac thing as they first said they’ll do). We then returned to our camp, I set up my tent, Cang and Jeremy set up theirs, I dug a trench around my tent and Sophie and Dominique shoveled a kitchen out of snow. We spent the rest of the evening in the kitchen eating one gastronomical delight after another, drinking our wines and beers and warming up by sitting huddled together. The cold was penetrating and merciless. I had many layers on yet I was struggling to stay warm. Being totally exhausted didn’t help either. Later that evening, Phil and his friends showed up at our campsite, heading a bit further up, cursing at how loud it is in the hut. They ended up building some snow caves and slept there after delighting us with their company in our great snow kitchen.

Near 10pm we called it quits and headed for the hut to clean dishes, melt some snow and clean up for bed. I had never camped in snow in winter before and was not aware at the difficulty of getting water out of snow. We must have melted shovels of snow just to get a bit of water out of it. It took forever! Not an easy task. At least that’s what I gathered from watching Sophie and Dominique doing it. They were awesome for doing that and taking care of the food and dishes. We’re forever indebted.

We all slept quite well. Sophie and me got to try our new Hybrid –12 sleeping bags from MEC that performed admirably. Kept us warm and cozy. Woke up to a beautiful day of clouds and patched of blue skies. I had spoken with Phil before retiring to our tents and the plan was to wake up at the first sign of light, hike up to just passed the saddle and the gargoyles and snowboard/ski down. Around 9:00am I hear Phil passing by my tent asking with incredulity: “What? You’re not out of your tents yet???” He went up as planned with his buddies while we were being lazy, waking up late.

Sophie and Dominique had promised us pancakes for breakfast so we were all eagerly awaiting their creation. During this time I had returned to the campsite and packed up, hoping I’ll still have time to go for a couple of snowboarding runs with Cang. It was 11:30am. The promised pancakes were unsuccessful...something about the water used to make them being too hot...some technical issues beyond my comprehension. So we snacked on some granola bars and other such bits.

Cang and I headed past the cabin looking for some good runs to board on. Still within sight of the hut we decided that that was our spot. As we went down, Phil and company were returning from their excursion up some true runs...and were most likely laughing at the puny run we decided to board on.

I went down once and waited for Cang at the bottom. Putting the split board together required a significant amount of time and some screwdriver action. We then hiked back up and Cang went on a second run. I returned to the hut. I was still pretty exhausted from the day before, not looking to drain myself any more than I needed before I had to lug that freight train on my back again. After some final packing we headed down. It was 1:40pm and we were the last people to leave the hut.

The trek back wasn’t quite as painful. I had split up my pack with Sophie a lot better this time and my pack was more comparable to a heavy anvil rather than to a small house. I still needed rest every few steps during the uphill though. We had cleared the snow route rather quickly and reached the downhill section of the trail. Cang put his split board together and boarded down, while the rest of us continued snowshoeing down. Our pace increased drastically and we were zooming downhill. We quickly reached the Red Header Hut, waited shortly until Cang arrived and had a quick lunch. Cang was beaming with excitement at the run he just did. He kept trying to convince me to board the rest of the way down. I’m still wondering how he managed to board with a big heavy backpack on his back and using the ski poles like a skier... I didn’t want to board down for a bunch of reasons. One was that I didn’t think I’d have the strength to do it. Another was that my pack was so massive and heavy I doubted I could shift my weight around to turn. And last reason was that I was too lazy to unhook the board from my pack.

We hiked down at a fast pace with Cang occasionally zooming past and waiting for us here and there. Nearly at the bottom and I stayed behind a bit with Cang to take some pictures promising I’ll catch up to the rest (my pace was quite a bit faster so I knew I’d catch up). As soon as I am left behind I hear a “pow” and my board start banging against my pack. A bit confused as to what happened I look back and see one of the bungee cords that was holding the board to my pack split in two on the ground behind me. Cursing I took my pack off and started tying my board up with this thin rope I had. Tried going again but it wasn’t working. I hadn’t tied the rope well enough and the board was sliding down and banging against my legs. At this point I see Sophie and Cang looking at me from the end of one of the switchbacks. They were worried that I wasn’t showing up and hiked back up to look for me. Cursing some more I took the pack off and decided I had no choice but to board down. I replaced the board with the snowshoes on my pack and started boarding down. Due to the super heavy pack, I was just flying downhill. Turning was easy but controlling the turn took a crazy amount of strength in my core. As soon as I passed Sophie I tried to slow down and fell on my knees in the powder. Gave up on snowboarding down then. I would have exhausted myself in minutes if I hadn’t ended up over a cliff.

So it was time for plan B: some bobsled action. I sat on my board, with the pack on my back and slid down. What I wasn’t planning on was how much speed I’d pick up because of that monster on my back. I couldn’t really stop myself without using both my feet and one arm dug into the snow. Did a nice 360 and stopped right before ending up over a cliff. So, after that it was time for plan C: walking with the snowboard in my hands. Didn’t bother with snowshoes at this point. Just held the board in my hand and walked the rest of the way down.

We finally reached the cars, changed and headed for the bar for some beers.

So lessons learned:

1. Stick to 30% of body weight as maximum weight to carry
2. Don’t carry a board with you unless you know for sure you can use it
3. Get warmer gloves, boots, and pants
4. Don’t carry wine in its original glass bottle
5. Boarding with a too heavy pack doesn’t really work
6. Snowboards have sharp edges that can cut the elastics used to hold them to the pack
7. Allow for lots and lots of time to melt small quantities of water out of large quantities of snow
8. A Sherpa is a super human that can carry impossible weights...don’t try to imitate them again