Staying in the sun to stay warm- SOAP BOX

It was cold out there, the thermometer in the car read -30C at the trailhead. Solar aspects were crusty. Northern aspects held the good snow, but being sheltered from the warming sun was cold. With good avalanche conditions, the plan for the day was to do a traverse where we would spend the majority of the time climbing the warm, sunny, aspects and drop into excellent snow conditions on the other side.

With no wind, it was actually not that cold once we got into the sun.

Topping out on climb number 1. After putting on down jackets over the softshells we had stripped down to, we dropped into lap 1.

On the way up climb number 2. Firm booting on the south aspects.

A little bit of rock scrambling higher up there.

Getting belayed into descent 2. We took our time here but in the meantime, the sun had dipped below the mountains and we were deep into the ice box.

This descent yielded the best turns of the day. Untouched snow and at least a couple of weeks since the last storm.

Battling skin failure in the cold temperatures, we were able to get over the last climb of the day and dropped casually into the final descent. We were pumped to spend a great day out in the cold weather, but a little miffed that we could not get a 4th descent in.