Author: Eric Matzner
General area: Longworth Lookout
Trip start date: 2021-04-12
Number of nights: 1
This trip came about from the confluence of several factors. The first was seeing the forecast for sun and hot weather, a second was a desire to do an overnighter in the alpine in snow, the third was a lull with my work, and the fourth is that I had a friend to join in on the adventure!
The plan was to head out on Monday, spend the night on the ridge, ski around Tuesday and get back to PG. Longworth lookout was chosen because I had been there before, we didn’t need a sled and the road would be in reliable shape. The days were chosen specifically to catch the sun right at the start of the good weather and maximize chances of having good snow while also getting awesome sun and warm days. Callum and I started out on April 12th from PG, reaching the trail head for Longworth lookout by 11:00 with skis on and skiing by 11:30. I wasn’t sure what to expect for snow condition at the base, but was pleasantly surprised there was enough snow to get going right from the truck.
As we climbed up through the wonderful Cedar Hemlock forests the snow slowly got deeper and softer, getting us more stoked for the descent! At about 1200m elevation the packed in snowshoe trail became very steep and we began breaking our own uptrack. Definitely a case of the existing track not always being the best way to tackle the mountain. We also had a hell of a time with sticky snow on the skins. Bringing up skin wax was a trip saving piece of gear.
After about 5 hours of climbing, we reached the ridge top, it was quite a grind! The choice to take time off work to enjoy sun also paid off, the snow was still powdery in the alpine, but the sun was warm and bright!
After an hour of looking around we settled on a spot to camp and started making our shelters. We decided we wanted to try our hand at camping in the snow instead of trying out the old lookout. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was a good choice. Since neither of us had a lot of snow shelter experience it took a while to get all set up, but we had our set up complete and supper cooking with a bit of daylight left. Callum and I made individual shelters, our tarps were pretty small and we wanted to try some different styles! That night as we ate our dinner we were treated to a deep and colourful sunset that seemed to last forever.
The snow shelters proved to be cozy enough for sleep, though I can see how multiple nights would start to get wet and unpleasant. We had our breakfast in the shelter (surprisingly warm in there after running the stove to boil water) then took everything down and packed up.
We stashed most of our gear then went out for a little ski around the bowl. We first went up to the Longworth lookout and checked it out. It has certainly seen better days. Both doors had been blown open and large amounts of snow had accumulated on the inside. We spent some time going through the logbook and checking out all the cool artefacts left behind. We then went NE to the next high point over. The snow through here was variable, with a lot of very windswept hard surfaces. We found a nice north aspect with soft powder and had some great turns into the bowl!
From there we decided to head back and pick up our gear and start making our way down the mountain. There weren’t really any nice runs in the area without committing to a much bigger day than we wanted and it was already noon.
At around 1:00 we were ready to descend. We stuck close to our uptrack, there were cliffs to the south and a deep drainage to the north we weren’t sure we could get out of (looks like great lines in there at the headwaters, just not sure about the ski out). The snow heading down was surprisingly good! I was expecting icy punchy misery on such a strong south aspect but was surprised with some wet but carve-able snow. As we entered the lower slopes and cedar forests, the wet heavy snow turned into corn snow and the skiing stayed good! I was pleasantly surprised as I was mentally prepared to walk the last few kms of the trail.
After a few spicy lines over bare patches of moss and twigs along the lower trail we made it out to the bottom! Though we didn’t do a whole lot of big alpine lines it still felt like a hell of an adventure to spend the night in the snow and traverse some distance in the alpine. Checked an item off my winter to do list and got to ski wintery snow conditions in spring weather!
Though Longworth is cool, I wouldn’t do a ski overnighter here again. I think there are a lot of places in the area where you can get a lot more bang for your buck with an overnighter. The big factor here was playing it super safe with access when spring break up was in full swing. There are some nice bowls in the area along the same ridge system as you head NW, but they would be better accessed by going up the drainage instead of the lookout trail. All that being said, skiing through the Cedar and Hemlock giants was pretty magical at times! It was also cool to ski a trail I had hiked in June, when I was thinking there was just enough snow left to justify hiking up the skis…
In the end, a great time was had in great weather and I still got some great skiing in. By all metrics a successful trip!