Mara Peak

                                                          Mara Peak December 13 2015

Since Mount Kelly was a pretty short ski trip we decided with Steven to head into Manning Park ski resort and access from there Mara Peak.

After we found a parking spot we started our way up skinning on the ski runs.

One ski patrol came to us and asked us where are we going and just told us just to be careful.

We soon reached the top of the chairlift from where we went into the forest where we found few guys on snowboards trying to find some lines with fresh untouched snow.

Wasn't too long for us to reach the summit of Mara Peak from where we followed our way back to the chairlift and skied back down to the car.

Mount Kelly

                                                      Mount Kelly December 13 2015

Mount Kelly is one of the easier  peaks near Manning park from John Baldwin's ski book with a fairly easy access and few options to ski down.

Me and Steven decided to go for Mount Kelly as a half day and do another small peak in Manning Park on skis.

We parked the car at the Alison pass shed where a worker cleared a parking spot for us from where we crossed the highway and went towards the old FSR which had few dead falls.

Half way on our way up we came up to the second descending option which goes into a nice gully pretty much all the day down to the gully and which is recommended in the ski book.

Soon we passed the towers and the terrain opened a bit and we were slowly making our way towards the summit.

Wasn't too long for us to reach the summit where we took our skins off and soon started our way back down to the car.

The skiing down was pretty fun, the snow was pretty good and the trees were not too tight.

Soon we got down to the gully which we followed almost all the way down to the highway and just before the highway we turned right to get back on our tracks and avoid some bushes.

Markhor

                                          Markhor Mountain December 19th 2015

I was always thinking to do Markhor Mountain as the classic Markhor-Needle traverse but Ben suggested to go up on it on skis following the route from John's ski book so we decided to go and give ti a try with Ben,Steven ad a friend of mine Alin.

For some reason we thought the parking starts pass the parking for Needle, so we drove a bit further and as we pretty much passed Markhor we looked back at the maps and had to drive back to Needle Parking.

The parking wasn't too busy and the workers cleared a space for us so we could park the car so we won't be in their way and soon we started our way up into the forest.

We pretty much followed the ridge which had some steep spots and soon the second group caught up to us, it was a BCMC group that was going up to the summit too.

Soon we got out of the forest and started to see some views and finally the summit of Markhor Peak.

The last to the summit was pretty steep and just 3 of us went to the summit while Alin was waiting and taking photos of us where we left our skis.

After few photos we started our way back down to our skis.

We did 2 laps since the snow was really good and the other BCMC group already skied few laps in the face which looked really good so we decided to do the same.

For our way back down we followed the description on the map we had, there is only one entry spot which you can;t really miss after what the terrain was great for a bit and once we got back in the forest that's when things started to get more interesting, some deadfalls and we were just following the tracks from the BCMC group that we hoped that they know the way and after a bit of not so pleasant skiing we all got back down safely.