You know the feeling of longing for creature comfort when you come out of the backcountry? Days of effort have welded sweat-soaked clothes to grimy skin, and thighs trembled under the weight of one more downhill step after thousands of feet of steep rocky trail under a full pack. I dreamt of clean socks, dry shoes that wouldn't wear down my bloody blisters any more than necessary. I thought of a fresh down vest waiting with clean clothes, just a couple hundred feet away as the rubber soles of my tele boots struck pavement and I entered the parking lot. The feeling is typical. My experience had not been.

A weekend of play can be hard to come by these days, but desperate for a taste of Canada's spring backcountry, we had bucked the odds. Art and Rich had begged away from a hectic schedule in the Portland City Planning department, Aaron was busier making maps at his GIS job than exploring the terrain they charted, and I scrounged on a freelancer's wages for the $120 plane ticket out of San Francisco. The four of us met in Portland, drove north through Seattle, Vancouver, and up the winding ascent of Rt. 99 past Squamish, sandwiched between mountains of gear in Art's SUV. We arrived at the Rubble Creek parking lot ragged and eager for a spectacular weekend of spring skiing in the Canadian Coastal Range.

We would ski the gentle ascent passed a giant rotten rock headwall called The Barrier, and on across the flats to Garibaldi Lake, in the southern section of Garibaldi Provincial Park. If all went well, we would traverse the frozen lake, climb the Sentinel Glacier towards spectacular Garibaldi peak, and descend the other side to the Alpine Club of Canada's Elfin Lakes hut, completing one of the classic Canadian ski traverses and possibly bagging a coveted summit along the way. And hey, if all else failed and the Neve Traverse didn't work out, at least we could get a couple days of great day skiing in based out of the Burton hut on the lake's shore. Or so we thought.

Our trip started pleasantly enough; packs loaded heavy with skis tied on and five days worth of food and whiskey packed inside. The sun beamed down on steaming asphalt as we left the parking lot, and gave spring nutrients to the vibrant green moss hanging from giant Douglas furs along our steep trail towards snowline. It was warm. Perhaps too warm. But hey, it was also spring, and we failed to notice.

After the initial grunt the trail flattened for another couple miles. Lesser Garibaldi Lake was mistakable for a small clearing under the heavy blanket of thickening powder, and we passed it quickly. Half an hour later we broke out of the woods and into Canada's prime backcountry. It was the views more than the exercise that quickened our heartbeats as we skinned into a hut along Garibaldi's north shore and took a lunch break. The famous Black Tusk jutted out of the skyline to the north, and across the vast expanse of flat frozen lake steep glaciers fell down cracked and crevassed off the remote peaks to the east. Straight across the lake, in the center of a pristine bowl surrounded by mouth-watering gullies and chutes, was our destination for the day - the Burton Hut. We broke trail in a two-mile line straight across the frozen lake, and found the crested peak of the Burton Hut's arched roof barely poking above the winter's snowpack. Tired, we dropped our packs and settled into the tiny bunker of a space.

By late afternoon the summer-like sun had baked all the way through our spring powder snow pack and begun to eat away at it like termites eat away at a board. As sunset approached, those tantalizing chutes on the ridge above us were running wild with falling rock and sloughing snow. The range began to thunder as large open slopes flirted with release under the weight of the melting snow. With an evening ski out of the question, we settled into our bags, worked to lighten the load in the Jim Beam bottle, and hoped for a deep freeze overnight.

Dawn brought sunlight reflecting off the now-glassy surface of Garibaldi Lake, which had transformed from a white fluff to a deep-blue pool of water atop ice overnight. Night never brought those freezing temperatures and snowmelt trickled down deep into the winter pack, eroding a season's worth of foundation. The lake was still passable, but it's melting made us nervous. If we started the high traverse towards Elfin Lakes, we would be completely committed, our escape cut off in a day's time by what was quickly becoming a three-mile stretch of open water.

We eyed the Sentinel glacier through binoculars that morning, nervous about our choices. The glacier climbed gradually toward Glacier Pikes Saddle, and eventually the Sharks fin - our route's high point. It looked passable, but climbed a wide-open slope that pitched at about 35 degrees. If the previous day's warming trend held for a second afternoon, the slopes would all slide and our ascent would be like climbing into the barrel of a cannon. We decided not to decide. The lake would hold for one more day. If it froze that night we would sprint for the traverse.

The next morning brought more blue water spreading across the lake like an open wound. The mountains were turning soft, and avalanches echoed out of surrounding valleys. Our route looked passable, but the commitment combined with unknowns made us nervous. We made the tough decision conservatively, tucked our tails and packed for the traverse back across the lake. It would take us an hour and a half to cross the lake, which now had at least a foot of water and slush pooling atop a sinking foundation of ice.

Traversing the rocky shore, which cliffed out in several places, might take us more than a day. We hit the lake at a jogging pace, steadily splashing through the slush at a safe spread. Skis sunk more than a foot in places, and our poles frequently punched through the ice's top layer into the unknown below.

As the day grew later the water got deeper and we raced against the clock. I tried not to think, tried not to stop, and in a heap of exhaustion finally reached the other side.

With only sold ground between us and the car now, we spent the afternoon trying to salvage some sporty experience out of our failed traverse. What we really did was give nature and circumstance two last chances to tell us loud and clear that this was not our weekend. After two hours of skinning and three thousand feet of gain up a mellow treed slope that would provide us some safe turns, if not the best, we stripped off the skins and pointed our tips downhill.

Art launched off the hilltop, and eagerly set into wide carving turns. About a hundred yards later his ski separated from his boot, and sent him tumbling down the mountainside. Closer inspection revealed an irreparable torn binding - we didn't have replacements. Using duct tape and picture wire Art's boot was loosely tied onto his ski. He tried not to turn. We all tried not to think about what could possibly happen next on what had become a laughably unsuccessful weekend. We dreamed about clean clothes and a happy return to the SUV instead.

— Abrahm Lustgarten, Livin' the Life for MountainZone.com