Cayoosh Mountain, Million Dollar Couloir

Original, un-edited trip report: https://engineeredforadventure.com/cayoosh-mountain-million-dollar-couloir/

 Background

Nick and I headed up to the Duffey for a quick hitting 3 day trip. Our first day we linked up NW Matier / Joffre Aussie / Slalok N Face; for our second day we wanted something a little shorter, simpler, but still interesting before driving back home. We didn't need to look much further than across the road from where our truck camper was parked: Cayoosh.

I'd marked Cayoosh on my map as something to come back for when I went out to the Wendy Thompson Hut the year before with Lane. Looking across the valley, Cayoosh looks impressive. The 'Million Dollar Couloir' seemed to be the popular line on the north side, based on superficial readings I did. Seemed worth a poke...

Trip Report

Nick, Michael, and I lazily slept in; having to pee pushed me out of the warmth of the camper and into the -2F plowed lot at Cerise. Sheesh.

Michael said his goodbyes and continued on his way up towards the Canadian Rockies for an ice climbing trip. After warming our ski boot liners, Nick and I made the short drive down 99 towards the Cayoosh pull-out. We could see the skintrack from the road...it was in the SUN! Heck yes.

We were glad to be surfing skinners. It's easy to forget how difficult route finding can be in a new place sometimes when you're so familiar with your home range. And especially with this uptrack...after following a logging road for a bit it turns steeply up into a dense, baby tree forest for a while before gaining the glacial moraine that leads to the summit. The skinner was quite hilarious in some spots, with small sections of down skinning leading back to side-stepping up. We'll call it a double black skintrack.

Once out of the baby tree triple riser section, we bumped onto the glacial moraine and the sunshine. The views back over towards the Joffre icecap were a fun reminder of the day prior. The steep skinner was kinda kicking our ass; both Nick and I were feeling pretty tired and I at least was feeling pretty weak. A month of objective skiing and some flu/cold/who knows what was taking its toll.

Whine, whine, whine...the skintrack sucked and was too steep. Okay, whining over.

There were plenty of attractive tracks in the glacier bowl beneath the summit that teased us for a lap. We resisted the urge, opting for a simple up-and-down day. We'd talked about possibly extending the day if there was eye candy that looked tempting.

We left skis at the saddle, booted up the rime ridge to the top and tapped poles. Nice work dude. A good two-day hitter. Both of us felt in sync. Rhythm. Momentum. It's addicting.

Back at the saddle, we housed a sandwich each and then clicked into skis. The top pitch was funk-board, then down to the glacier for the traverse over to the Million Dollar Couloir. There's a short booter to get atop the Million Dollar that's a cool change of pace. Makes the day feel comprehensive, or something like that. A ski mountaineering day: summit, booter, couloir.

We clicked back into skis, followed the many tracks down to the couloir, and peered down. A plumb line, not too steep, with plenty of tracks. Kinda seemed like the Slot Couloir of the Duffey. I took it first, doing my best to ski funky punch-board as best I could. I'll keep convincing myself that skiing variable, bordering on bad snow will make me a better ski mountaineer.

Some pushing, poling, and luge-ing brought us back to the logging road. We took a quick peek at the Cayoosh Hut and did our best nordic skiing impression as we refused to put skins back on.

Back at the car by 1:30 PM, we were stoked on a two-day hit in the Duffey.