Dome South Couloir - Sinister North Face

John and I had a leisurely 10a start from the Downey Creek TH on 4/25 with packs loaded for three nights and what looked to be a nice stretch of weather. We were pleasantly surprised to find the Downey Trail in excellent shape with just a few minor obstacles in the last mile. In about 2.5 hours we were at the Bachelor Creek turnoff. We made quick progress up the initial mile or so before starting to hit intermittent snow around 3400’. Slow progress for a short stint had us skinning around 3600’. From this point we were able skin without much trouble all the way to the ridge above Cub Lake. I had exited Bachelor Creek previously on a summer Ptarmigan trip which was quite shwacky. This time of year all the alder and brush is nicely covered in snow making for fairly easy travel. I imagine this will change quickly as the alder start to emerge.

A short and sloppy descent down to Cub Lake was our only downhill turns the first day. We finished the day skinning up to a nice camp spot on Itswoot Ridge. It took us just over 8 hours to this spot.   

We knew Saturday was our best weather and refreeze day. We started our day booting across from Itswoot Ridge to the Dome Glacier. From here the standard climbing route had us on the summit ridge in about 2.5 hours from camp. Our first descent for the day was to check out the South Couloir of Dome. My friend Kyle had shown me a picture of it a bunch of years ago and it had since been tossed around our ski circle as something, someday, to check out. The initial headwall off the summit ridge had a nice pitch before quickly easing back into a bowl feature. The line then curves along a huge rock wall down the south side of down. The pitch stays pretty moderate but the position and the snow conditions were excellent. At around 6500’ we traversed hard skiers left and found easy skinning up to a saddle between Dome and Sinister.

From this saddle we worked our way down the Chickamin Glacier with plans to check out the North Face of Sinister. From our initial angle the North Face looks pretty exposed and appeared to have a band of ice across the steepest pitch near the top. We decided we would just start climbing up the line and flip if conditions stopped making sense. We roped up and traversed above seracs to the base of the line and started booting. We found settled alpine power that was perfect for booting. Once to the top of the line we were stoked to find continued good snow climbers left of the visible ice and made it to the summit. The descent off Sinister was phenomenal. Steep, sustained alpine pow high above the Chickamin Glacier. Tough to beat!

We descended to about 6800’ to the flat bench on the Chickamin and took some time to admire our position. On a massive glacier surrounded by Dome, Sinister and the Gunsights, quite a place. High clouds started to form and we roped up for the climb back to the Dome Saddle. No issues with shrunds this time of year. We decided to reverse our traverse back to Itwsoot Ridge with hopes that the clouds and cooler temps would temper the slopes that had been in the sun all day. This wasn’t quite the case and we had a tense skin back across kicking off loose wets and observing a few small naturals. Not ideal and in retrospect we would probably loop around on the Dana Glacier to avoid this.

Clouds socked us in once back at camp and we made the decision to exit the next day. Mainly to give us the green light to finish all our whisky, gotta lighten the packs ya know? We woke up the next day to a beautiful morning and enjoyed a quick ski from the Spire Point Ridge before packing up to leave. Clouds continued to build all day keeping the snow surface supportable. We were able to ski continuously from the ridge above Cub Lake to about 3500’ before hiking out the rest.

This was an area I’ve been wanting to check out on skis for some time. I had originally planned to explore it as part of a Ptarmigan Traverse but having spent a fair bit of time on the north end of the Ptarmigan this year I wanted to maximize time around Dome and avoid the car shuttle. The approach and exit are long but really not too bad with decent snow coverage in Bachelor Creek. Many thanks to John for joining me on this trip!

Dome Summit Ridge

Dome South Couloir

Dome South Couloir

Climbing Sinister

Sinister North Face

Sinister North Face