Stadium Gully - Sky Pilot Approach/Descent

grooznor , Saturday 30th November, 2024 9:15PM

Approached towards Stadium Glacier via regular treed route but stopped short and just skied Stadium Gully. TLDR; tree triangle was still in pretty rough shape on the up and down, and the skiing in the alpine was a little crusty on fresh tracks but following what’d been churned up still made for a nice descent. Pictures of Stadium Gully on our way up (low vis), from the base after skiing to show number of tracks, tree triangle descent vs the creek, and a peek out at Exit Gully from the top of the tree triangle (did not ski it). Visibility improved considerably as we got to the top of the gully, making for nice skiing down the gully by avoiding the melt/freeze crust and focussing on where it’d been churned up into soft snow by all those skis and puppy paws. Both skinning up and skiing down through the trees still felt pretty 5.11ish, per Thursday’s MIN report from the area - seems it would’ve been more efficient to just follow the existing bootpack tracks up through the tree triangle at this point in the season. On the descent, the creek was probably worse than the tree triangle due to lots of holes and slim snow bridges to navigate across, but pick your poison I guess.