February 21, 2026
~ submitted by Evan Martin
This was the second trip in the ski series that I’m organized this year. In preparation for upcoming overnight tours, the intention of this trip was to test out our winter camping setups and learn what it feels like to ski with a heavy pack. This trip definitely served both purposes! With over 30cm of snow leading up to this trip and a heavy snowfall warning the conditions were ideal.
Our arrival at the base of Becher was a sample of the conditions we were about to encounter. The snow plow hadn’t yet reached the parking lot and we pushed through about 30cm of snow in order to park our vehicles. I packed up some spare gear in a pulk I borrowed from the club and we proceeded up the easy route to climbers left. Although there was lots of fresh snow, there wasn’t much of a base. This made towing the pulk challenging at times, but overall it wasn’t too bad. I only had about 15 lbs in it though.
We made it to the top of the old ski resort. At this point it was still snowing heavily and none of us felt like pitching our lightweight three season tents and leaving them there. The spare tent I had pulled up in a the pulk was a heavy four season tent, so we decided to set it up and leave our gear in it. With our packs lightened we proceeded towards Mount Becher.
The significant amount of fresh but heavy snow made breaking trail a chore. It was slow progress as we made our way slowly up. The creek that the trail normally follows became our path. We ascended the first steep slope by taking off our skis and hiking a steep portion of the trail. What I had skied down last year was a rocky cliff this year! We continued up the mellow slopes until we arrived at the second steep slope. This one had let go in a dry sluff avalanche last year so I was little hesitant given the high avalanche danger and the high accumulations. We took a look at it but decided it simply wasn’t worth the risk proceeding. We got a few turns in on the way back to camp and called it a day.
We all setup camp, prepared dinner, and completed our other nightly chores. I had no problem calling it an early night and crawled into my tent by 7pm. It was not a cold evening, but the humidity was high and the wet snow falling made everything damp.
At about 11pm I was woke by a fellow camper scampering about. The weight of the snow had collapsed their tent and they just had enough room to wiggle out of the half unzipped door. I bounced out of my tent, grabbed my shovel and help get things cleaned up. We were able to clear the snow around the fallen tent, get everything out of it and transferred to the four season backup tent. I then proceeded to dig out everyone else’s tent to prevent a second incident. We set an alarm for 3am, at which time others took a shift digging out our tents.
After an eventful night we were up at 7am and got everything cleaned up. The skin back to the trucks was no less eventful. I had trouble with my skins sticking and decided to leave them off. This made pulling the pulk uphill very challenging!! This very quickly became frustrating and I decided the steepest way down the ski hill would be the best. Unfortunately this led us into a series of alder beds. There was a few times I was knee deep in powder, ski tips under an alder, being pushed downhill by a pulk. Regardless, I powered through and even enjoyed a few turns back.
When we arrived back at the trucks the fun still wasn’t over. There was about 45cm of fresh snow on the trucks. This combined with the 30cm of snow that still wasn’t plowed made for a truckload of work. Luckily the plow had made a single pass through the lot so we only had 25m of snow to shovel.
It wasn’t a trip for the feint of heart – but that wasn’t the group who chose to go out. Everyone showed excellent determination and made an enjoyable trip out of challenging conditions.