Although we were not aware of it at the time, Gibson Pass Ski Resort has two designated routes for uphill travel, and by luck, we just happened to skin up one of them--Horseshoe ski run (the other is Wagon Train ski run).  At one point, a ski patroller stopped to chat with Zosia and mentioned that it was not necessary to climb all the way to the top of the Orange chairlift to access the trail to Poland Lake.  Instead, roughly where the Horseshoe ski run makes a hard curve to climber's right, we headed left through an obvious break in the trees and followed snow-covered tracks until we intersected the official trail coming from the top of the chairlift.  At this point, we were not that far below the top of Grassy Mountain, and despite the inclement weather, I felt it would be remiss of us not to expend a little extra effort to tag a named summit that was so close.  We headed west a bit along the trail to Poland Lake before finding a reasonable slope to climb to the top of Grassy Mountain.

With no views to speak of, we promptly descended the west side of Grassy Mountain and eventually regained the trail to Poland Lake.  The ski to Poland Lake was long but easy, and we stopped there for a snack before commencing our return journey.

On our way back, we took another detour to climb up Bojo Mountain just east of Poland Lake.  Both Zosia and I were unaware of Steven Song's trip report (he traversed the ridge between Grassy Mountain and Bojo Mountain), but the ascent was easy enough to do without a lot of prior planning.

Since we still had some uphill climbing left to get back to the ski resort, we left our skins on while descending from the top of Bojo Mountain and only took them off once we were well past Grassy Mountain.  After removing our skins, we took a slightly different route thinking we would reach the top of the Orange chairlift, but somehow we still ended up at the same obvious break in the trees which was our original point of entry.  The remainder of our ski back to the base area was uneventful.

The heavy snowfall throughout the day made for challenging driving conditions as we slowly exited Manning Provincial Park and headed for Vancouver.  Although it was not a great day for viewing scenery, ski touring between the two mountains and Poland Lake was still good fun.  Hopefully our next visit to this park will be blessed with sunnier weather.

	Zosia skins up beside the Orange chairlift.  The designated uphill route follows the ski run on the left.
	Zosia takes a shortcut to reach the trail to Poland Lake.
	Zosia climbs steeply up the slope.
	Sonny reaches the summit of Grassy Mountain (1895 metres). Photo courtesy of Zosia Zgolak
	Zosia arrives at the summit of Grassy Mountain.
	Skiing down the southwest slopes of Grassy Mountain is both tricky and a lot of fun.
	The trail to Poland Lake is mostly easy to ski.
	Poland Lake is covered with snow on this day.
	Zosia breaks trail through deep snow on her way up Bojo Mountain.
	Sonny stops to admire the surrounding views. Photo courtesy of Zosia Zgolak
	Zosia reaches the summit of Bojo Mountain (1899 metres).
	Zosia prepares to ski down the east ridge of Bojo Mountain.
	After removing his climbing skins, Sonny is ready for some downhill fun. Photo courtesy of Zosia Zgolak
	Sonny arrives at the official start of the trail to Poland Lake. Photo courtesy of Zosia Zgolak
	Snow is falling heavily as Zosia makes her way down the ski run.
	Total Distance:  12.2 kilometres Round-Trip Time:  5 hours 28 minutes Total Elevation Gain:  ~810 metres Total Elevation Loss:  ~389 metres GPX Data