Hibox

My partner Kate and I slogged it out to Hibox this past weekend to enjoy the spring like conditions and explore a lesser traveled area. It’s around 6 miles of road to the Rachel Lake Trailhead, three of which are nicely groomed. We actually missed the turn off for NFD 4930 and had to spend some time cutting back across to it.

From the trailhead it’s pretty easy travel through low angled trees to the flat ridge to the SE of Hibox where we dropped off our overnight gear. It was fairly early in the day and we decided to check out Hibox and see if we could find some good skiing before things started to refreeze. The summit chute had already developed a nice crust as it loses direct sun a bit earlier in the day so but the slopes below the summit block skied great.

On day two we headed back to Hibox to ski from the summit. The morning started with some high clouds that threatened to spoil our day but they blew off fairly quickly. We made good time retracing the previous days track and booted straight up the SE chute to the summit. The conditions were perfect for our descent and we enjoyed a few hundred feet of steeper turns down the chute followed by more excellent skiing on the slopes below the summit block.

We contemplated skiing fall line to the valley for our exit but opted to retrace our approach for a faster exit. Once back to the road we had to skin about 4 of the 6 miles. While this area has a pretty high cost to enter with the road skin it really was not too bad. It would be a great place to spend a few days and venture over the the Three Queens which looks to sport some really great descents!