Adam and Shane arrived late Friday night and drew straws over the foldout couch vs. the floor with mat and sleeping bag. We made plans today for a trip to the Galloway Bowl after discarding Agassiz Glacier as too far for a single night trip. We similarly discarded Lone Mountain as it's also quite far and could be a long walk for marginal turns. The possibility of poor snow existed due to the lower elevations and unknown quantity or quality of alpine terrain. Galloway Bowl offers up a 1,000 foot descent from 8,000 feet on a pure north aspect. It also has some backup tree runs nearby with a nw aspect.

We loaded up at the buffet breakfast before loading the heavy packs and starting out from the parking lot. Just as we were leaving an avalanche forecaster with the park pulled up to do the weather observations. We chatted and I made the mistake of divulging our plans. I don't hide the fact that we travel to the states - yes it's probably technically illegal, but it's a bit more grey than it seems at first glance. My park and the one south of the border are part of an international peace park. There are hiking trails, including the aptly named Boundary Trail that meanders back and forth across the 49th without a requirement to clear customs. In the summer if you rent a canoe and paddle to the far end of Cameron Lake, you also cross the same line. I've run into both park forecasters on the wrong side of the line before and they've their discussed day trips south of the line. I even have a picture of a pit the one dug in Amercia for his recent Avalanche forecast in Canada. They've discouraged it as an activity that one shouldn't undertake, but never expressly forbidden it and I don't think they could enforce it even if they wanted to. One also needs to consider the geography at play as well - upon crossing the 49th here, you are a minimum of 2-3 days of difficult travel by foot through mountainous terrain to the nearest form of civilization in the winter. I don't think that loading up a back pack with 3 days of food and a few pounds of illicit cargo wouldn't appeal to most smugglers?

Anyhow, this particular morning the forecaster decided to plant a seed of fear about being barred from entering the states if we were caught and went as far as to suggest that he'd talked to a group of American researchers who had a Blackhawk helicopter hover over their heads a few days ago. He even threw in that the forecast was calling for an inversion and the upper elevations of the Galloway Bowl wouldn't be very good. Ironically enough, Adam and I, along with two others have first tracks in the Galloway Bowl, but it was this same forecaster who suggested the name for it, assisted with travel plans, and congratulated us after the fact with the words "Skookum job lads".

In view of all of this, I stopped at the Akamina Pass trail head, which is a scant 15 minutes from the parking lot and decided to make sure everyone was still comfortable with the mission. The risk was generally agreed to be extremely minute, but the consequences of being barred from entering or working in the States led us to plan b - Lone Mountain.

We headed west down the pass and then starting a slow climbing traverse of Mt. Rowe. We needed to travel about 4 miles and we didn't think gaining the 8,000 foot summit of Rowe and then following the ups and downs of the ridge only to wind up around the 7,200 foot drop into the Blakistan Creek drainage made much sense, so once we hit 7,200 feet our slow climbing traverse turned into a side hill walk. This continued until we encountered the bowl, which looked small enough on the maps, but to follow this elevation all the way around it would add considerable time and effort. It was about a 4-500 foot descent down into the treed bowl and then an equivalent climb up the far side. After a bit of debate, we opted to split ski the descent. A few crashes and a couple of linked turns later we were at the bottom in the canyon style creek bed and starting to gain the other side. I was in the lead breaking trail, when I found my path blocked by a branch - not that uncommon - breaking them off or ducking under them is as routine as anything. This one snapped where I wasn't expecting it to and the remainder came back to hit me in the chest with thud. Whew, lucky that didn't have anything sharp on it... I continued on up the steeper section in search of a natural ramp we'd spied from the other side of the bowl. A few minutes later I pulled out my gps to see where I was in relation to the ramp. It was then I learned that the screen on the gps was shattered. Shit!

Both Shane and Adam own a gps as well - complete with topo data and they'd both brought them on the trip - but they were back at the hotel. My paper map was also there - with the planned trip to the Galloway Bowl, I didn't feel the need to bring a paper back up - I know the terrain there pretty well. The clouds were low and we weighed our options. We were confident we could find the drop spot, but exploring Lone Mountain area without a map in cloudy conditions didn't sound like a lot of fun. The forecast was for clearing skies, but what if they didn't? Looking across the valley revealed some quasi-alpine bowls, but nothing that screamed out come ride me. Looking at our watches, we figured we could descend to the valley, pick up the Akamina Pass Trail, make it back to Cameron Lake, up the Summit Ridge and down into Boundary Creek area - more or less our original plan.

The creek bed canyon proved flat on the bottom with steep walls. We slowly picked our way up and out of the canyon, traversed a bit, switched over to snowboard mode and attempted to traverse back towards the east. However the canyon had other plans and despite our best traverse efforts soon lured us in once again. Attempts to ride the creek bed out were met with open water and a ton of dead fall. We skinned up and out of the canyon again where we elected to split ski through alder, more dead fall, small creeks and various other obstacles. Upon reaching the valley floor we bisected it and couldn't find the Akamina Pass Trail. At around 2:30 we finally stopped for lunch. Getting the 50 lb packs off was a treat. Camp here, explore whatever we could see tomorrow? Keep moving east? We slogged through more challenging terrain before finally coming across the Wall Lake trail. A lot more walking brought us to the boundary cut line running to Forum Ridge. Continuing to follow the trail would take us to the road, which would still require a walk to get to Cameron Lake, so we opted for the cut line with plans to descend from the base of Forum Ridge to the lake. It's a route I'd never taken before but had heard of people skinning up. I expected a flattish descent in split ski mode but of course did not get it. We should have snowboarded it but didn't - just par for the course today. At 5pm we finally staggered to the lake. The same lake that is a 30-40 minute walk from the parking lot. The same lake that the moose has one skinned in just over 10 minutes (albeit not with a 50 lb pack)

Exhausted we briefly debated gaining Summit Ridge and pitching a tent up there. With an hour of daylight left, setting up camp and cooking in the dark that close to the parking lot seemed trivial. The allure of real food and a hot shower proved too strong. We pulled the pin and skinned back to the vehicles.

It's hard not to second guess the decisions... should we have stuck to the original plan? Should we have brought an extra gps? A paper map? Continued without navigation on the second plan? Camped in the valley? Camped at Cameron Lake? Blackhawk helicopters? In retrospect, I remember hearing a helicopter once in 3 years and 60+ days in my park.

A definite learning experience and by far the hardest 2,860 feet of my life. Outside of a short lunch break and a couple of times we switched from skins to boards, the packs were on our backs for over 9 hours.