Last weekend I had a great backcountry trip to Ripple Ridge Hut. I keep calling it a weekend, but it wasn’t, it just felt like it. It was a nice casual weekend in the backcountry… on a Thursday and a Friday.
It was a hut trip that would make any “hardcore” skier or boarder cringe. The (not)weekend actually started on Wednesday night. My partner and I headed over to the couples house we were going touring with for a dinner party and sleepover. The idea was that by spending the night in Ymir we would be closer to Kootenay Pass so we could get a nice early start. Well the red wine at night and banana pancakes in the morning had other ideas. We were at the parking lot with our skins on by the crack of noon.
If the “hardcores” are not scoffing yet you certainly would if you saw the size of our packs that we were carrying in for one night in a hut – to give you an idea we had 3litres of chilli stored in mason jars, as well as fresh avacodo and red pepper for sandwiches. By the time we got to the Ripple Ridge Hut, chopped some firewood and made sandwiches with that fresh avocado it was after two before our we started heading up for our first lap.
We hit the peak that is halfway between Baldy Rocks and the Crags. The stability was good, but not surprisingly, the south aspect we needed to get back to the hut had a little bit of a crust. The crust went away after we hit the trees and we ended up with a really sweet run through a glade with cool terrain features. That was our only run for the day, we could have squeezed in another short one, but then we wouldn’t have had time to build a snow cave.
Back at the hut, as the sun was setting the women folk prepared the cabin while the men folk dug a snow cave that could sleep four, even though we knew no one was going to sleep in it. With the snow cave dug and the dark set in, the cooking, eating and drinking began. To wash down the chilli and loaf of fresh bread we mixed up something I like to call White Hot Hydrators – Lemon Lime Gatorade and Bacardi Limon (warms you up, replaces fluids and gets you tipsy – what else could you want out of a hut drink?!) . For desert, we headed out to the snow cave and enjoyed some brownies (Whitewater cookbook recipie), a carton of red wine and a Kootenay cigarete.
The morning of day two was slightly earlier than day one, but a really low cloud ceiling meant that day two also only yielded one run. Do not fret hardcore skiers, we were still able to make a good day of it… we headed to Ainsworth Hot Springs, then back to Nelson for supper at the Outer Clove and beers at the Hume.
All and all, it was a really great (not)weekend for a bunch of (not)hardcore backcountry enthusiasts.
Little bit of lovin on the peak
Tessa looking back on her line
Sunset as seen from the Ripple Ridge Hut
Hot Chilli!
Creating some cold smoke to set the scene for the thriller dance (as performed on a snowboard)
Chilling out, desert in the snow cave
