Pro Guiding Service - Rodgers Pass

Situated above the 49th parallel, Rogers Pass doesn't always deliver what you'd expect of the Northwest. For example, even in mid April as you tour from the Trans-Canada Highway into the icecaps of the Selkirk Mountains, you're often contending with north-facing fields of powder.

You're also contending with neck-cramping walls of rock and leg-tiring expanses of ice. Couple that with the fact that the surrounding 2000 square miles of park and Crown lands are populated by about 20 people, and it starts feeling pretty wild out here.

The skiing is wild, too, as you leave the highway 2.5 miles south of Rogers Pass and ski up the Illecillewaet River under the rock pyramid of Mount Sir Donald, whose walls rise 7000 vertical feet above you. You reach the Illecillewaet Glacier and ski upward past cracks whose blue lips outline black holes. At about the 8000-foot level, the pitch of the glacier mellows and melds into an undulating frozen reservoir measuring nine square miles in size.

It's a place that feels like Alaska.

And it's a place worthy of a high camp (staying down near the highway in the Wheeler Hut, run by the Alpine Club of Canada, 403-678-3200, also allows day trippers access to this domain). From such a camp, you can easily blow a few days exploring the perimeter of the icecap, skiing lesser peaks rising above the ice, and peering down the vertical-mile drop bordering the eastern flanks of the icecap.

When it's time to return to the highway, ski the north-facing slopes funneling into Asulkan Brook. Or, for a longer, wilder descent, ski beyond Asulkan Pass to Asulkan Ridge and drop into the Loop Brook drainage via the Lily Glacier. These north-facing slopes are likely to be plastered with weightless snow. As you drop, however, powder around the knees will give way to glop around the ankles. Pretty soon you'll be smacking into trees and taking branches across the face.

Which makes you realize that Rogers Pass doesn't completely escape its Northwestern roots--its pleasures still exact some penance.