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The Little B's, the Three Elks, and Tobermory Cabin! (Part 1)
Report Submitted by Little Bs
(trip) Date: Monday Apr 01, 2024
Submitted: Friday Apr 05, 2024 at 12:17
Participants:
The Little B's and Dad (Mike W)
Discussion:
We were jealous that Dad took his new friends, the Sporten Explorer 64s, on two trips to distant cabins: Cuthead and Little Pipestone (
https://www.skierroger.ca/index.php?content=showski_special&id=2982 https://www.skierroger.ca/index.php?content=showski_special&id=3023 ). It's been a long time since we visited a cabin and wanted to join the fun. So imagine our excitement when Dad asked us to go with him to Tobermory Cabin in BC on a route that to the best of his knowledge had not been done before. We love exploring! MaSid suggested it a month or two ago. Dad expected it would be his toughest tour this winter: 18km of trailbreaking, reports of very sticky snow, and searching for a way down the unexplored Tobermory Creek. As an added bonus, we'd get to revisit out good friends, the Three Elks! (
https://www.skierroger.ca/index.php?content=showski_special&id=2098 )
We arrived at the Elk Pass parking lot at 0810, under sunny skies, calm winds, and a temperature of -7C. No one else there. Reports said the Elk Pass trail had been trashed by hikers, but we saw only a few shallow footprints. We followed hard (but not icy) tracks made by AT (All-Terrain) skis and made good progress to the Hydroline junction. Dad had checked Nordic Pulse at 0530; nothing had been groomed that night. So imagine our delight when we saw Hydroline freshly groomed, glistening in the morning sun, as yet untouched by skier, snowshoer, or hiker! We don't normally rave over groomed trails; we prefer the untracked wilderness. In any case, we're too wide to fit in the tracks. But today's grooming was a work of art; a masterpiece of peerless beauty! We carefully lowered ourselves into the tracks for a photo-op.
Total distance: 30.90 Km
 WARNING: Professional skis on closed track. Do not attempt if over 65mm wide. May result in track damage, slow progress due to excessive friction, and bodily harm from angry skiers.
We continued on the fresh corduroy which was just hard enough to give our bases an invigorating massage as we moved along. We passed by S Lookout, also freshly groomed. When we arrived at the pass., Middle Elk was sitting at his picnic table drinking his morning home-brew coffee along with his business partner Owl. Elk & Owl do a roaring trade selling coffee and pastries to exhausted passers-by en route to and from the Elk Lakes cabin ( https://www.elkowl.ca/ ). After a quick chat we headed down freshly groomed Tyrwhitt, to the E Elk Pass turnoff.
 Tyrwhitt
 Leaving Tyrwhitt and heading S to E Elk Pass
 Meadow en route to E Elk Pass
We followed an existing track from a day or two previous, probably MaSid's, and soon arrived at at E Elk Pass where East Elk and his Snofa were nowhere to be seen! We later found out that every April 1 the East and West Elks take their Snofas to off-site storage in the clouds for the summer, where they'll stay until next winter's snowfall. The ski tracks ended here, but we moved easily on a supportive crust as we continued south along a meadow and Tobermory Creek. We were now in "terra incognita", or so we thought. Imagine our surprise when we came across another skier heading the same way!
Dad said it would be a good idea to follow the otter's tracks since it ought'r know where to go. We pretended to laugh. The meadow led to a maze of open-water streams. But whereas the otter was happy to cross through the streams, we don't like to get our skins wet. We had to stretch and jump from side to side several times.
Soon the valley narrowed and the meadow ended. On the west side of the creek we located a few tree blazes set by a local outfitter to mark his horse trail. We decided to leave the otter track and follow the horse trail instead. In fact, we went above the horse trail since we suspected it might criss-cross the creek several times. We now encountered the sticky snow. We soon had a couple of kg of snow stuck to the top and underside of each of us. Since it was generally downhill, we tried removing our kicker skins but the snow just stuck to our bases instead. Our last resort was to put on our freshly waterproofed full skins. And to be extra safe, we added a layer of rub-on skin wax. This was the best choice as we now only had 1kg of snow on each of us! The sticky snow was snow in the shade that hadn't gone through a melt-freeze cycle yet. The snow in the sun, whether hard crust or broken-down crystals, was fine. So the prime directive was FTS - Follow The Sun. After about a km we came to a small clearing.
 Small clearing with "Tobermory Ridge" to the right / west.
In the clearing we could see what we named "Tobermory Ridge" to our right. This ridge goes all the way down to Tobermory Cabin and the side slopes become steeper as you head downstream. We soon had difficulty traversing the slopes, so we headed down to the creek to see if we could pick up the horse trail. But we picked up the otter track first!
 Otter track continues down Tobermory Creek.
The creek was now easier to cross than it was in the meadow because the creek was constrained to a narrow drainage and there was lots of snow.
We even picked up the horse trail again, marked by green flagging tape on the east side of the creek. But we were now confronted with new challenges: Deadfall and steep avalanche-prone slopes.
 FTG - Follow the Gruelling, ...
 ... but stay away from here!
Most of our route was now on the east side of the creek. The valley started to open up and the trees thinned when suddenly, ...
... Tobermory Cabin appeared, where we stopped for a well-deserved rest and our third lunch break!
Our story continues in Part 2, posted as a separate report...
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