BOU AVENUE
Baldy Mountain
On 3 January 2019, Zosia Zgolak and I
visited Baldy Mountain Ski Resort
which is located about 23 kilometres east of Oliver, British Columbia.
Our plan was to skin most of the way up the easy run known as Baldy Trail
and then go outside the resort's boundary to reach the summit of Baldy
Mountain. The weather did not look promising when we arrived at the
resort's parking lot as a thick mist severely limited visibility in all
directions. Undeterred, Zosia and I geared up and started skinning
up Baldy Trail along the boundary fence. Early on, a ski patroller
skied past us while checking on the integrity of the fence, and she did
not show any concerns about us skinning uphill. About 1.8
kilometres from the base area, we passed an obvious road which branches
off to the left beyond the resort boundary. Although we did not
take the road at this point, this is a service road which ultimately
winds up at the top of Baldy Mountain. We continued climbing along
Baldy Trail which runs parallel to the service road, but eventually, we
realized that we were not gaining any more elevation by staying within
the resort boundary. After consulting the map in my GPS device, we
decided to leave Baldy Trail and try to intersect the service road.
This was, of course, easier said than done as we were immediately faced
with a slope that was too steep to tackle directly. Worse, a brutal
wind chilled us to the core and blinded us with blowing snow. We
were essentially traveling in a complete white-out. In retrospect,
it probably would have been more prudent to abandon our summit attempt,
but we pressed on convinced that the service road would be our salvation.
Zosia and I traversed westward in order to
ascend the steep slope more gradually, and despite poor visibility, we
were fortunate enough to find some old tracks to follow here and there.
Even when we reached what we believed was the service road, it was hardly
recognizable because of the heavy snow accumulation. We were almost
solely relying on my GPS device at this point to navigate, and the climb
itself became a rather surreal experience as we slowly passed amorphous
mounds of snow-covered trees or rocks which were our only points of
reference in an otherwise blank landscape.
The summit of Baldy Mountain is cluttered
with telecommunications equipment and buildings, and we were thankful to
be able to take shelter from the fierce wind behind one of the larger
structures. We removed our climbing skins here and took a very
short break before commencing our descent. Had the weather been
clearer, we may have considered skiing directly down to the top of the
resort's Eagle Chair, but with the white-out conditions, it was best to
retrace our tracks. Even this was not without some difficulties.
Zosia and I stayed close together so that
we would not lose sight of each other as we descended. At one
point, we inadvertently veered a little too far to skier's left, and I
suddenly felt the ground below me drop away unexpectedly. I took a
spill and immediately thought that I might go for an extended tumble with
all my ski gear getting lost across half the mountain. As it turned
out, I only fell about a metre, but I had also ended up on an
uncomfortably steep slope that felt like the edge of an abyss. I
took a moment to collect myself while Zosia cautiously avoided the
drop-off and stopped to give me some morale support.
Without losing much elevation, we
traversed away from the steep slope and eventually got back on track near
the service road. We subsequently descended the road for awhile
before muddling our way down to the resort boundary. Looking like a
couple of big popsicles but feeling relieved to be back on Baldy Trail,
we skied down to the base area without further problems and promptly went
into the day lodge for a much-needed hot lunch and to defrost ourselves.
When we were suitably recovered from our ordeal, we packed up our gear
and drove to Kelowna where we would stay for the night.
Afterward, Zosia and I agreed that it
would be worth returning to Baldy Mountain on a nicer day in the future
because we both felt that we had missed out on some potentially
outstanding skiing there.
Navigation is not easy in white-out conditions like
this.
