This trip was up to Round Mountain and the Red Heather Hut. This is a fairly well used, and known beginner-friendly area to get a bit more time in. If you're a mountain biker, you may know the Garibaldi Park area, and you access this area all the way up Garibaldi Park Road. There's a final stretch that requires having chains in the winter - but if you don't have them, you can park lower and hike (or skin up if snow allows). If you've been to Elfin Lakes, you would also know this area, as the same trail is used to get access to the area.
Of note, the Red Heather Hut is just a warming hut, and is not to be use for overnight camping - you would want to look at the Red Heather campground or higher up to Elfin Lakes shelter or winter campground if that was the goal. Reservations required in either case. The hut does have a wood stove, a couple picnic tables, wood burning fireplace with wood that is meant to last the whole winter (don't overdo it!), and an outhouse - but bring your own TP! Nice place to stop, warm up, and chat with others as you likely won't be alone up there!
The trail up was pretty packed snow from the high usage of this area - being really accessible for easy day trips. You likely won't be setting the skin track here!
There's one spot on the ascent that allows for a bit of a peak through the trees and gives you an idea of what you'll see from the top!
You can also check out some pillow lines that cut in from the skin track higher up for those that have enough knowledge and skill to cut through on the descent.
Couple more of the uphill (since this is where you spend most of your time touring)
And here we are, at the Red Heather warming hut! Apparently I didn't take any photos inside - maybe another time, but you can also find others with a web search.
Nice tree decorations!
And now you can see how heavily used the area can get - despite that, people tend to spread out after this hut, and you can still get a lot of fresh powder to ride and have a lot of fun!
We skinned up to a summit around 1550m behind the hut, then came back down a little and over the top of Round Mountain around 1650m - there were a couple tricky steep spots that were giving out a little near the top, but we made it up! There may have been a more accessible skin track, but we had committed to this one already. I still hadn't found comfort in the setup I was using, so from there there was a couple steep ways to descend and I found myself scooting a bit here and there to get past that first, but once I did it was nice smooth sailing. There was some flatter terrain as you get closer to the hut, so if you can't keep up speed on a splitboard, it ended up being a bit of extra effort to make it at least back to there. This is when I realized I wanted to keep pushing myself with skiing, so I can pick and choose what I want to take when touring depending on the terrain.
A quick photo on the way back past the hut on our way back down and out. Of note for the downhill if you didn't recognize this while going up, there's a fair number of water bars - so when the snow is a bit lower, they're a lot more apparent.. so be careful going too quick. It's also not a wide area for descending, so be aware of uphill traffic and be courteous to those still making there way up.
Following up with the stats for this trip!
