Mont Dodge, Mont Logan from La Nyctale Hut

March 10, 2023

We tried skiing the eight kilometer loop from the hut in the morning. It was foggy so we decided to save the summit of Logan for later in the day, hoping it would clear up. We did not get far. Though the Lac des Iles trail was fun (and no snow machines!), complete white out conditions made it difficult to follow the trail except by looking down at your feet trying to make out old ski tracks. Descents were impossible to ski at more than a snails pace. Just before the major descent down to the lake we aborted and returned to La Nyctale.

A little foggy this morning

The clouds cleared up around noon, so we struck out again, this time aiming for Mount Logan itself. We skied a little ways down the machine track and then spied a nice slope that would take us up to the summit of Mount Dodge. Upon reaching this slope we were again surprised to see that it was covered in snow machine tracks. It was also fairly icy, so the decision was made now, that this would not be our descent route. The summit of Dodge was somewhere in a broad expanse of gargoyle trees. We tagged what seemed to be the highest point and then decided to "get out of Dodge" and turned towards Logan. Kat led us through the maze of snow blobs down the other side of the mountain until we picked up the machine trail again.

Much nicer in the afternoon

Searching for the summit of Dodge amongst the gargoyles

A fast descent with lots of wind drifts where I swear I caught some air a few times brought us to the base of Mount Logan. The steeper slopes and icy snow conditions here had us applying the skins, and the brisk wind had us dressing up for the alpine. The climb was fairly straight forward skiinning up the icy snow and in fairly short order we arrived on top among the copius pieces of summit junk that adorn the top of this mountain. The views though were fantastic as we now were in a perfect bluebird day. What a change from this morning!

Climbing the icy slopes of Logan

Final approach to the summit cone

Checking out the view towards the St. Lawerence River

Summit of Logan

We left the skins on for the descent to keep control over the icy slopes. At the bottom we climbed down into a deep tree well to get out of the wind and relax a bit over a late lunch. We took the machine trail past Mount Dodge which had a crusty, but fun descent back to the hut. It was too late now to do the loop we attempted in the morning, but there was some time to play around some more on the slopes by the pond again.

Lunch in a moat

Practicing our telemark skiing techniques

Returning to the hut we saw that the baggage service had delivered a couple more packs. It may be getting crowded in here tonight.

[Home] [Main] [Prev] [Next]