Trip Report: Brohm Ridge (& Cut from World Games)

So Long, Chengdu

I didn't make world games! I found out from an 11am form letter on Monday, which encouraged me not to give up on ultimate entirely.

Brohm & Brap Boys

I'm over it though. Obviously. The important thing now is to focus on backcountry skiing, a restful and restorative hobby with no suffering involved.

Gabriel suggested we join some friends at Brohm ridge on the weekend. I was staying in Squamish cat-sitting and it was finally snowing, so this seemed like a perfect alignment of the stars.

I've never been to Brohm before but I've driven past it many times on the way to Whistler. We turned off into the park, received a dire warning about the icy roads from some poor lady they stuck in the snowmobile club tent, and then ripped up the icy road to the trailhead. There was about a foot of snow at the trailhead with more coming down.

The most interesting thing as a skier on Brohm is the lodge; there's a super sick Euro-style chalet at the top of the ridge with rooms (!), a pool table (!!) and a flat top grill (!!!). Apparently this was built as part of a ski resort scam back in the 70s and then got taken over by the snowmobile club and turned into a functional lodge. I applaud them and I applaud this chalet.

The ski in is about 10km and a bit of an FSR plod with a steady low-grade effort uphill. The skiing itself is pretty mid. We had a couple fun road laps down from the ridge itself but when we tried to ski the trees we got turned right back around. The ski out was irritating because of the snowmobile bumps on the road and the low grade, which meant there was a lot of poling and shuffling required. However, I can't really be mad about the snowmobiles because one of the guys on the sleds brought eggs (!) and hashbrowns (!!) to cook on the flat top. Also it's their area and they run the place, so.

I learned an important lesson about downhill skinning on the rocks on the way out. Gabriel said we should take our skis off and put them on our packs. I said no way. My big dream was to put on skins and go down over the super thin layer of snow on the gravel. Gabriel said my plan wouldn't work but what does he know?

Unfortunately he was right and it was impossible to turn on the rocks with the skins on and I crashed into the bushes.

The good news is that I only sulked about this for the final few kilometers to the trailhead, because I'm extremely stoic and calm.