Backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering are among my favorite activities, so I jumped at the chance to cover a story on a new lodge in the Rocky Mountains for The Globe & Mail. The Lyell Hut, a new satellite hut for Icefall Lodge, north of Golden, sits on a rocky outcrop in the Lyell Range at 9400’ elevation.
After a heli-flight to the main lodge, which would be our base for the next seven days, our guide Geoff Osler began planning when we would do the Lyell excursion. On the 3rd day, conditions were perfect and by 5am we were climbing with headlamps up steep frozen snow slopes and avalanche debris from the previous afternoon’s slides—the reason for the early start.
We reached the hut some eight hours later, after scrambling up a 50-degree col with skis on our packs and a long traverse up the Lyell Glacier. I was exhausted, but the trip was worth it. The two days at Lyell were amazing, as was the rest of this trip. There’s nothing like spring skiing in the Rockies.
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