The peak bagging bug has been getting to me recently. Maybe it’s always getting at me but the countless TR’s I’ve been reading definitely get me going. The forecast for the weekend was originally great so I started with plans for a longer ski traverse. But as the weekend approached, it the weather started turning poor. Not wanting to sit around all weekend, I made plans with Emily for a day trip up Cashmere on Sunday. The weather showed clouds but might as well give it a try. Late Friday night I drove over to Forestlands. 5 hours later I was back awake and by 6:30, me and Emily were walking on 8-mile road. The road was very melted out for early April so we were soon on the Lake Victoria trail. From here, in approach shoes we started climbing up a steep snow slope with intermittent brush. I was putting a lot of faith in my approach shoes on the steep, frozen slope. Luckily I never slipped and by 7:30, we put skins on.
From here we started moving as the sun came out. I regretted my clothing choices but I just rolled up my pants and kept at it. Soon we were traversing down to victoria creek, where we were hidden from the sun by the surrounding valley. We kept moving up and by 10:30, we were at the lake. We took a quick break at the lake to drop our approach shoes, heavier gloves, and take a look at our line. Victorias secrete couloir looked very filled in but also well hidden from the sun. The other, more obvious couloir had tons of wet debris below it.
From here we quickly crossed the lake and worked up the obvious gulley, switching to booting about halfway up. We were feeling good and soon in the basin below the summit. We decided to take a direct line up the snowy face to the top, where a party had already summited. As we worked our way up we watched them ride down the bottom half of the NW face. The climb up the NW face was fun and secure with an ice axe. After a nice summit break with views of the Stuart Range, we began our descent down.
We booted past the chokepoint on the NW face and took a skiers right line. From here we went over to the entrance of Victoria’s Secret Couloir, but soon realized it was too icy. We booted out to the main gully and rode soft snow with fun texture to the lake. From here the exit was straightforward, just following our tracks to the road with a little bit of skinning. We got to the car a little under 11 hours after we started, all in all a nice day in the Stuart Range.
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