Fuck yeah! Ski mountaineering at its finest. Climb the SW ridge, a 3 star grade 3+ mountaineering route to the summit, rap the ice and then tear it up for 600m down the West face before cruising the mellow slopes down to the Bonar. I skiied this line with Sam McGrath in October 2019, and it’s one of the most fun trips in the mountains I’ve had.
We headed in 3 days after 30cms of fresh snow and cold temps aiming to ski the line in powder. But being West facing it’s also a great line to get some afternoon corn on.
Approach
I’ve talked about the approch to the SW ridge in my post on climbing the SW ridge. If you can get through to the land owners and they give permission then driving to Cascade hut makes a biiiiiggg difference! When you’re on skis I think it’s a total no brainer to stay at French Ridge hut rather than camp up high. You cover the distance so quickly on skis that the advantages of staying at the hut (unlimited water, good nights sleep, dry gear, way lighter packs) far outweigh getting a slight lie in. We left the hut at 0600 and were on the Bonar by 0800 and climbing the ridge by 0900.
Climb
The snow from the hut to the Quarterdeck was in full melt freeze mode, and pretty bulletproof. It’s never particuarly steep but often quite narrow with some big exposure off to the east. Ski crampons are a must! Unfortunately one of mine snapped in half about 20 minutes in so I was walking behind Sam in crampons and axe with my skis on my back.
The schrund before the Quarterdeck can be an issue and becomes impassable late season
generally the further climbers right the easier it is to cross. We were lucky and everything was fat, with no signs of anything opening up.
After skinning across the Bonnar, aim for the base of the SW ridge and find the best / easiest spot to gain the ridge. Generally the easiest way is to cut round to the West of the ridge and head up the snowfield running paralell to the ridge towards the West face, then cut up the snowfields from there to gain the ridge part way along. This means you miss out the rocky first section of the ridge and speed things up significantly. You’re also on a long low angle west facing slope to make stability assessments before reaching the main face, and the smaller slopes leading up to the SW ridge make for lower consequence test slopes. Once on the main ridge, the gradient is a consistent 40-45 degrees all the way up to the crux. We had chalky pressed powder on the face, but with sastrugi and windswept ice on the ridge itself. By soloing this section up to the crux we could move quickly and were at the crux just after 11:30.
We decided to leave skis / board at the bottom of the crux as we didn’t think the snow looked particuarly great on the summit, and not worth lugging up through the crux pitches. So after stashing the gear we headed up the crux with nice light packs.
We had brought one 70m half rope to save on weight, and doubled this over for pitching the crux with me leading tied into the two ends and Sam tied into a figure 8 at the halfway point. This let us climb the crux in 2x 30m pitches. The ice was in great condition, fat and taking confidence inspiring screws. There were a couple of less than body height vertical sections / bulges with generally 70-80 degree ice. It’s pretty similar to Altered States at the Remarkables. As we were planning on rapping back down to our gear, we scoped out spots for threads / anchors on the way up.
After pitching this steep section the angle eases right off and you cruise up to the summit. We got to the top at 13:30. We were glad of our decision to leave the skis/board – would have been less than 50m of skiiable snow from the summit before hitting ice above the crux.
Descent
After a brief break to take in the views and refuel, we down climbed back down to the start of the ice and then made 2x 35m raps down to the skis on V-threads. Be prepared to leave a snow stake behind as often the ice at the very top is not good enough for threads. There are also some options on in the rock on skiiers right for knife blade pitons or small rock gear. We were back at the skis and ready to drop in at 14:30. The ski line is pretty straightforward – essentially fall line from the crux. However there are some big cliff bands to negotiate, so you generally have to trend right initially, before cutting left and then right again towards the bottom to get through these.
Also, you’re going to be skiing a different line to the climbing line so it’s worth taking the time to scope the line from the bottom to try and identify any areas of poor snow or ice that may trip you up on the way down. It’s steep enough that you probably won’t stop if you fall and its a long way down to the Bonar – there have been several nasty accidents in the past caused by a fall on this face.
Our first few turns were on firm chalky pressed powder, which then turned into boottop powder for the majority of the face down to the Bonar. Cue whooping and high fiving! We were back on the Bonar just 8 minutes after leaving the crux.
A cruisy skin back across the Bonar to the Quaterdeck and then down to French Ridge for goon and dehys! We were back by around 17:30
Peak Exposure 