Mt. Faye, Mt. Quadra, 3/4 couloir in a day

The Lake Louise area is one of the most concentrated areas for these afore mentioned big lines, so on about the 15^th of May, the well seasoned posse of Greg Hill, Mark Hartley, Isaac Kamink and I, drove back to Moraine Lake with intentions of bagging multiple peaks, and shredding their goods.  

High above the Valley of Ten Peaks, the ultra classic, 1000-meter ”3 / 4 couloir” (aka the $20 couloir as it used to appear on the back of the Canadian $20 bill) is just a short skin away from the parking lot and would be our “warm-up” boot pack.

From it’s top, we contoured around the back of the 3234 meter Mt. Fay, objective #2, and booted up a short couloir, from where we could slide out to below our first goal: Mt. Quadra.  I’d wanted to hit this one for a long time, as a striking couloir right off its summit is easily seen from the highway.  It looked to be in great shape so we kicked steps up another 400-500 meters to a sub summit, just below the main summit of 3174 meters, and enjoyed a great view in sweet sunshine. 

The first few turns were steep, maybe 55 degrees before evening out to a nice consistent 45.  Conditions were perfect knee-deep fluff, which sluffed wildly as we carved it up.  It was a very memorable run!

We had to move quickly as our next plan was ascending the south side of Mt. Faye, which was getting warmed by the sun.  Normally we’d prefer to ascend the line of descent for high north faces, but our intuition told us the north side was good to go.  Fortunately overcast skies had just taken over and kept the south slopes of Faye from heating up too much, thus insuring our safe passage.  

We tagged the summit, switched into descending mode, and slid over to the Roth / Kallen where we found a nice anchor already in place to rappel the cornice.   The first set of turns were quite steep, 50-55 degrees, and exposed being above a dogleg.  Greg and Isaac skied first finding just enough snow through the choke at three quarters height.  When Mark and I got there, we felt that too much snow had been scraped off, so playing it safe, we set about rappelling 20 meters or so, to where we could get an edge in again.  Powdery jump turns, sustained at around 45 degrees made up the rest of the run. 

The Neil Colgan hut was only 15 minutes away, and on our way out, so we stopped in for a quick re-fueling on soup and coffee.  Unfortunately, no one had brought any scotch, which would have undoubtedly helped our cause, and relaxed weary muscles before the heading for home.   Once leaving the hut, and 15 more minutes of ascent later, we clicked into the final run down the infamous 3/4 couloir to Moraine lake and the car.  We found it in various conditions: the top third was amazing powder and a real pleasure to ski; the middle third felt more like hard work, but not terrible; and the lower third turned soft and buttery, which gave our tired legs a break before skating across the now semi frozen lake, to the beers awaiting us in the car.     

Although the total vertical gained for the day had only been about an 8000’, due to 6000’ of that being bootpacking, it felt almost twice that big. However, we pulled it off in 13 hours car to car with lots of breaks, and never feeling like we were pushing it too hard.  Good fun, great value!

All photos copyright and property of Jon Walsh