Author: Alex B
General area: Murray Ridge
Trip start date: 2022-03-27
Number of nights: 2
Trip planning is always hard for multi-day spring ski tours. Dates are penciled in weeks or months in advance and fingers are crossed in anticipation of a bit of good luck and a good weather window. In our case, we planned to head into Snowshoe Lake for a few nights but the forecast deteriorated to the point of bailing on the trip – rain, freezing rain, and high winds are not ideal for camping in the snow at high elevation! Snowshoe really does deserve a good weather window. If you are in it, you’re in it – a.k.a “it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun!” – but if you have the choice, avoid the misery!
Luckily, we checked the weather models and noticed the forecast north of town in the Pine Pass for the same dates was very good, so we improvised. Bluebird camping here we come!
I’ve often looked at Murray Ridge and the distant Mt Hunter from the highway and from the top of PK and thought it would be a cool area to check out. I was also inspired by Reece and Ben’s trip report and chatted with Joel who had day tripped the ridge in the direction of Mt Hunter and he gave us some good ideas for access.
There was a big fire in the Stack Creek watershed in 2014, about 10 km southeast of Powder King. The drainage looks to have good skiing in the old burn with many different aspects to choose from, and it looks like you could get up Mt Hunter from the valley… tempting! We thought we could get out there and make a basecamp to then attempt to summit the Mt Hunter complex.
There were two routes that we considered to get into Stack Creek: the first was to stay low and shwack through the forest about 10 km to get to the burn. This route would include a few cutblocks and gullies and seemed a bit undesirable. The absence of views was the main drawback. The second route was to gain the ridge quickly and then traverse the ridge and drop down to stack creek. Oooo views! This would be more like 14 km with a lot more elevation to cover. Option 2 seemed reasonable at the time!
We parked our truck at the Chateau Atco (40$ per night to park! Questionable!) and started touring. We skied a crust down to the highway, crossed the highway, and followed a sled track. We all had 80-ish liter packs, but Tim’s seemed impressively heavy… I wonder what he has in there? Or maybe I wasn’t carrying enough of the communal gear!
The weather was awesome and we chose to gain the ridge. It was a slow boilerplate climb and generally uneventful. I caught up to Hardy and said “thanks for breaking trail .. get it?!”. We eventually got into some more challenging sections where those with ski crampons made quick work of the side-hilling, and those without crampons slowed to a crawl with what looked like stilettos on a hockey rink. The ridge was beautiful, the weather awesome, and the views spectacular. The Old Friend area to the south looked particularly epic, perhaps a future mission we thought.
As we traversed the ridge – up and down, up and down – we eventually got to the “small” peak before Mt Hunter NW, and it looked pretty hardcore. It was already mid-afternoon and I said (seeing as I was the one who planned the route and was keeping track of our progress on the map) “If we keep going, we’re going to be skiing until past 8 PM… best case scenario”. We still had 250m to gain the false summit, then drop down and traverse a while more, then drop back down to Stack Creek from midway on Mt Hunter NW.
Hardy, who is truly a 12-year-old trapped in an adult’s body, clearly wanted to keep going up to the summit. We chatted as a group – having already done ~14 km that day we decided not to continue. Our options for camping would be quite limited until Stack Creek and we really didn’t know what kind of terrain we were going to be up against. We will tour up tomorrow with light-day packs and fresh legs. After all none of us had been here before and we were making decisions based on what we “remembered we saw on google earth”….. uh oh!
Hardy set up the Megalight Hotel – a siltarp with a central tent pole. Nice and cozy! There was absolutely zero wind and we were all smiles. I opted to just put my mat on the ground and sleep outside “à la belle étoile”. It was a starry night with no wind in the mountains – when does that ever happen!
The next day, we traversed with daypacks and summited the intermediate peak between us and Mt Hunter NW. It was all smiles on the ridge. The bluebird conditions, exploring a new area, and seeing so many wildlife tracks (wolf, caribou, marten, hare, ptarmigan, etc.) had us over the moon.
The ski down from the summit along the ridge ended up being quite steep and exposed, we opted to downclimb with a reverse boot pack. The whole time we were all quite relieved that we had not continued the night before and done this section tired, in the dark, and with heavy packs.
As we toured to the base of Mt Hunter NW, the wind began to pick up, and pick up, and pick up! By the end of it, the wind was howlin’! I was 90% sure that the Megalight Hotel would be somewhere near Chetwynd by now. Ye of little faith!
We never, not once, saw Mt Hunter proper – it was somehow always hidden behind Mt Hunter NW. Even when we got to the end of the ridge and peered down into Stack Creek. Awesome zone! But too far for this day trip ridge walk. We would have needed a few extra days to do everything we wanted on this trip!
That night we camped again in the alpine but instead of a calm serene blissful night, the winds howled and howled! We build some snow walls around the megalight and dug out a kitchen to get some shelter from the blast. Long story short, not much sleep was had. The megalight was smashing all night and snow was blowing around like crazy. We all had one eye open hoping someone else would go outside and tighten the tent up and add some blocks to our wall. But no one ever did! Lazy bunch!
We skied out down the gulley to the northwest of our original skin track. Nice and comfortable ski! Trees got tight eventually and just before finding the initial skin track we met a trio of snowshoers that were headed up to a small series of lakes located on the slope up to the ridge. Cool!
The last push to PK was a slog but we knew that good times at the Azou burger bar were not far away! From the road, we looked back up the ridge stoked that we had explored an area that was new to all of us. Lot’s of potential out there, but a few more days would be needed to really get to know the place and make it to Stack Creek and ultimately Mt Hunter. Until next time!