Trapper Peak Spring Skiing

The Rocky Mountaineers-Classic Trip Series-Trapper Peak

As the April 2007 installment of the Rocky Mountaineers Classic Series Trips, Alden Wright led a ski trip up the normal route of Trapper Peak. We met at 6:35am in the K-mart parking lot and headed down the ‘root. Ron Pierson, Alden and I arrived at the turn off for the Trapper Peak trailhead and found that we were following Brett Doucett up the mountain on our way to the trailhead (a bit of foreshadowing for the coming climb). We parked at the second crossing of Troy Creek (5500’) and headed up with our skies on our backs. It had been cold enough the night before to allow us to hike on top of the snow to approximately 8000’ before we donned our skies. At one point we were accompanied by some bobcat tracks paralleling our path.
We made the summit by 2pm and were joined by two others (that, as it turns out, participated in Alden’s trip last year!) The visibility was excellent and we marveled at the array of snow capped mountains that Trapper offers. As the wind intensified and the clouds gathered, our bodies began to chill and we retreated from the summit one by one. It had been a brilliantly sunny day and the snow had softened considerably. The downhill offered mostly wet, heavy snow that was difficult for me to navigate (Alden seemed to do fine)! There was one really good stretch of skiing roughly between 9600’ and 8800’. On our way down we met three other skiers who were headed up for a short run.
Back at the truck at about 6pm, hungry and tired, we thanked Alden for picking a perfect weather window for leading a great trip. ;)

See more pics of this trip at:

mtsurveyor's WEB ALBUM

Images

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