Pat Mulrooney Photography: Losing weight in Slim Creek....

As the season that keeps on giving rolled into Spring we planned another big Easter long weekend on the coast. This year it fell early and entirely in the month of March so conditions would likely be prime for the picking. I usually like to pick a place that isn't easily acsessed and where we will undoubtedly be alone. When you travel just a little bit north of Squamish it always amazes me how many of these types of places exist. We are so lucky to live in a mountain range that remains very wild. Our destination for this five day trip would be Slim Creek and the Bridge Glacier area. It showcases all of the above and provides the back-country traveler a small glimpse of some of British Columbia's most fantastic ice-fields and mountains.

We made a stop over in Bralorne and spent a cozy night in the historic Bralorne Pioneer Mines Motel. ...

I had a better than usual sleep knowing that Hops were growing outside our window....

Friday morning we woke to bluebird skies and cool temps and made our way to the trailhead. The advantage of heading out with sleds is the ability to pack the extra things that make everything a little more pleasant and comfortable. Towing a snowmobile toboggan is no picnic in technical terrain and until this trip I had never really dialled the system in. A couple of days earlier I visited my trusty friend and auto mechanic Richard of RJD Services who helped me make some crucial modifications to the tow hitch.

When we arrived at our trailhead we found the locals had groomed at least the first 30kms for sled traffic!

We set off and spent a few hours making our way westward looking for the perfect base camp to access what the area had to offer....

As we broke into the alpine we realized the day was too good to not get after it so we dropped the bulk of our gear and headed out further.

The stoke was high!

This place is big....

And this place is vast....

We set out sights on Sorcerer Mountain near Slim Pass....

Despite the good snow year we were experiencing, some slots on the glacier were showing themselves so careful navigation was required....

As we approached the ridge-line the bigness of the zone presented itself....

As a bonus, the boys at G3 set our crew up with some of next years equipment in the hopes of putting them to good use in their natural environment. Danielle rocked a pair of the floaty Empire Carbons while Kurt was on the light and powerful FINDr. Both were outfitted with Ion's and Scala Skins. And most importantly I was riding the new Scapegoat full carbon Splitty!

We should go there....

And over there for sure....

And how about there!

It was a "Good Friday" summit....

We dropped in at 5:00pm and found the cold pow we were looking for....

Gotta love the early Spring long shadows....

Back at camp we set ourselves up nicely for the next few days. Night one turned out to be a chilly one at -14degC but that meant high quality snow so we toughed it out....

Saturday morning looked to be shaping up well....

The days destination was Tillicum Mountain just North of the Bridge River. A cool note about this beautiful mountain is "Tillicum" means "people" in Chinook Jargon and also over time came to mean "Friend".

We set out and made our way up on another stellar day....

On the way we found some juicy lines for the days ahead....

On Tillicum's summit we got a great view of Scherle Peak where I have this amazing memory of Danielle dropping into it's NF back in 2012....

She's a beauty of a line....

I caught a view of some heli tourists track's to the south....

And the mighty Bridge Glacier....

Tillicum's North Face was spectacular....

Next we poked around on Ipoo and found some more pow on it's West facing slopes....

We celebrated an amazing day out with three of the best beers on the planet. Come to think of it I've sipped the nectar of these from each of their sources in Dublin Ireland, Plzen Czech Republic and Salzburg Austria.