Fairview: Part 2 of The Canadian Rockies

With weather less then ideal we had to scrap our original plans and head south in hopes of better weather. We decided among are endless options to head down to Lake Louise Chateau and do a circumference of Fairview Mountain and ride down surprise col a 2000 vert colouir which runs to the shoreline of Lake Louise.

With a wrong turn we set foot on the wrong trail traversing well over 2 miles before backtracking to the Fairview trailhead at 1 in the afternoon. We were fortunate that someone else had already put in a skin track as we raced up the mountain switching over to bootpacking once acquiring the windswept ridge.

Before long we were standing on top of Fairview looking directly down 3000 feet to Lake Louise and quickly setting our gear up for a decent as we had under one hour of sunlight left and more then a mile to go before reaching our col.

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What we thought was a easy ride down quickly turned into Billygoating as we carefully rode into the windswept face.

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After spending 15 minutes carefully navigating through the face we made it into a wide open bowl which yielded blower powder with every turn.

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As we dropped to our traverse trail we hastly skinned across the valley before reaching surprise col at dusk. The light was quickly dwindling as we dropped into the wide open chute with knee deep blower powder for over 3000 vert. By the time we reached the West face of Lake Louise it was time to put on our headlamps and skin over 2 miles back to the Cheateau and our car. This would be are final day in the Canadian Rockies but hopefully not the last trip out here this season.

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Thank you for reading and If you enjoyed reading this and want to see more ski tours abroad check out this link

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