Description

One spot available. Act fast!!

The Wapta Icefield is an incredible destination for ski
mountaineering. Really, it has it all: an excellent hut system,
perfect terrain for traverses, and easy access to excellent
ski mountaineering objectives. The best time of the year is
late March to late April when the snowpack is settled and
you can still count on dry powder runs; this trip is right in
that perfect window.

The classic Wapta Traverse runs roughly north-south across
the expanse of the Wapta and Waputik Icefields passing by
four ACC huts. The east-west crossing, from Bow Lake to
Takkakaw Falls and the #1 Highway near Field, BC is a
classic traverse in its own right, but a much more serious
one due to the 20-km crossing between the Bow and
Stanley Mitchell huts. The new Louise and Richard Guy Hut
at Mont des Poilus breaks up this crossing, making the trip
safer and more comfortable and accessible.

The first documented crossing of the Bow-Yoho Traverse
was made in summer, 1910 by the renowned Austrian guide,
Conrad Kain. Kain guided the route in six days from Laggan
(present day Lake Louise) with pack horses to Bow Lake and
included a first ascent of Mont des Poilus on July 31, his
27th birthday. (ACC)

The new hut also provides a staging point for objectives
around the Des Poilus Glacier zone: Mt. Collie, Mt. Des
Poilus, and the exciting steep descent directly to the lower
Yoho Glacier are a few of the options that previously
required either very long days from huts, or a high camp.
Now you’ve got the state-of-the-art Guy Hut to return to at
the end of the day! We will spend two nights at the Bow Hut,
two nights at the Guy Hut, and a final two nights at Stanley
Mitchell Hut.

This itinerary is longer than some other Bow-Yoho trips
offered, giving us more time to explore the incredible ski
mountaineering available instead of putting our heads down
and charging through the traverse.