Marrit Basin/Wendy Thompson Hut

In an effort to practise what we learned in Avy school, and also to get out skiing of course, Bram, Clint, Thomas and I planned a trip up to Marriot Basin for the weekend. Being our first real self-planned trip it went fairly well. The choice of weekend couldn't have been better either: low avalanche danger and some of the best powder I have ever skied!!

Bram, Thomas and Clint drove up thursday night past Pemberton and camped at the side of the Duffey Lake highway so they could get a headstart on the powder Friday. I drove up with Miranda and Liz at a (not so) bright and early 5am Saturday morning. After driving, skinning up and a leisurely ski in we made it to the hut at 1pm to find the guys just returning from a morning trip out.

Miranda on the trail to the hut:


Looking back down the trail at Liz and Miranda with some unnamed peaks lining the valley:


After a quick rest and lunch at the hut the 6 of us headed further up the valley sides for some skiing.

The group eating lunch in front of the Wendy Thompson Hut:


The hut is located at the end of a valley with steep sides that make for great skiing. This is a pic of one of the slopes we skied up then down. Our skin track is the switchbacks on the left and the tracks coming down are Clint, Thomas and Bram's from the morning. Some pretty sweet skiing!


Thomas, Bram and Liz at the top of the valley deskining. Mt Rohr is the mountain in the middle, surrounded by unnamed peaks:


A great afternoon of skiing culminated with some nice dinner followed by schnapps in a very crowded hut. The hut 'holds' 16 people, but is way larger than that. I think there were around 20 people there in all, with me being the youngest! The hut is extremely nice and cosy.

Normally it would have been an extremely nice and cosy night's sleep, but somehow I managed to roll off of my thermarest and spent the whole night freezing on the plywood floor. But in a semi-sleeping state I didn't realize this until 6am and we got up at 6:30! Oh well, 2 nights with less than 4 hours of sleep never hurt anyone.

Sunday we left early in minus 13 temperatures to go climb Mt Rohr, or so we thought. Heading halfway back down the trail we came to the approximate point where you have to start climbing the valley walls up through the forest. We jettisoned our unneeded gear such as sleeping bags and stoves in the middle of the forest and started up through the trees.

Shedding excess gear:


Before long we came to 2 options: either go up the super steep hill or go around it. After an argument we 'decided' to go up the super steep hill following some skin tracks. Well the skin tracks led us first in the wrong direction, then back across the hill and the finally back down to up part of the valley I wanted to go in the first place, wasting an hour. From here on we had to break our own trail in the deep powder. Wanting to avoid an avalanche slope our group 'made' another bad decision of trying to go up an impossibly steep slope through "the forest from hell". This fatal mistake took us three times as long to reach this lake we were aiming for, but finally we made it after much agony and cursing.

Clint and I at the unnamed lake:


Looking up the lake up our objective, Mt Rohr, the white mass to the left. Strangely enough we found this ski track of one lone skier who came down from the slopes above. We never could figure out how he got up there.


At this point it was pretty obvious we weren't going to make the summit another 600 meters above us so we climbed a small hill North of the lake which gave us a good view of the Marriot basin/valley from which we came. The hut is located roughly at the tree line below the pointy peak at the end of the valley. Saturday we skied up the slopes at the top of the photo.


Our day's efforts weren't all in vain as we were at a pretty good elevation and had to drop back into the valley. So after digging a snow pit which yielded reassuring results we hit the slopes with renewed vigour after being defeated. Once again the conditions were bomber, yielding the best powder I've ever skied: light, fluffy and deep! This is one of the slopes we came down. Miranda is the skier, and Liz is the small dot in the middle sitting down.


After tramping around in the forest for a while we found our gear, repacked and headed down the hills though dense forest - not the easiest thing to do with an overnight pack on. Much "turtling" was involved!

Completely beat after skiing for 9.5 hours in -7C we made is back to the car at 5:30 just as the sun was going behind the mountains. Not surprisingly we were the last cars at the trailhead.


Back in Pemberton we went to the only restaurant we could find, which happened to be a fairly swank place that looked like it belonged in Whistler. The food was damn good. Finally after a long drive we arrived back home at a modest 11:30pm completely wasted from the weekend. Depending how you look at it, it was another successful trip completed, and always loads of fun!!