Mount Matier

March 22, 2023

It was a beautiful, fun-employed Wednesday when Mike and I set off to do Mount Matier. It’s the tallest summit in the Joffre mountains group, so I was especially stoked to see it on the list for the Ski to Sky challenge. Conditions were looking good overall, and somewhat stable for avalanche conditions, and our biggest concern was warming snow throughout the day. Mike was initially keen on trying to ski the North couloir of Matier, but for my ski ability and for the challenge I was mostly interested in just getting up it, and skiing down the Anniversary glacier.

The walk in to Matier was pretty cool, since you can see the tall pointy mountain right from the road and then most of the way up the trail. It looks so, so far away and SO tall, but you gain most of the elevation pretty quickly near the end, meaning the approach through the forest and meadows to the base of the glacier goes by really fast.

Around Keith’s hut, I was already getting a little worn down due to all the recent adventures. In the name of wanting to get up and down before the sun melted all our terrain, I relented and allowed mike to Mike kindly take some of my heavier gear. Now travelling a little faster, we zig-zagged our way up the Anniversary glacier to the base of Mount Matier.

Sketchy bridge crossing near the start

Heading up toward Anniversary glacier

Skirting the right side of the glacier for a little while

Anniversary col

Toward Hartzel and Spetch

Big expanses of snow.

The views when you reach this col are simply sublime. You suddenly have excellent views of Mount Joffre on your right, Matier on your left, and an expansive glacier with the rest of the Joffre group directly in front of you. It’s a pretty surreal sight, and we stopped here for a good lunch break and to assess conditions. A couple folks rested nearby, who were taking a beautiful alpine nap while they waited for the rest of their party to summit Joffre.

The snow so far was looking really stable other than some warming from the sun, and despite Aussie couloir getting pretty warm, the sun hadn’t quite started warming up on Matier yet. Because of this, we were feeling pretty confident about continuing up Matier on much steeper terrain.

We cut a few somewhat exposed switchbacks into Matier, before stopping about 100m from the summit at a bench to switch gear and ditch our skis. Once we donned crampons, we expected to be putting in a lot of effort to post-hole up to the summit, but we quickly picked up a well travelled boot track, and were walking up it like a staircase. It was nice to have an ice axe since it was very steep and exposed, but at no point was I overly stressed about the climbing itself – everything just felt so stable.

Skinning up Matier

Looking back towards Mount Joffre. Lots of tracks towards the Aussie couloir!

Looking back at Mike climbing Mount Matier

Final section of booting up to the summit

The summit was one of, if not the most beautiful one I have ever stood on. It was sunny up there, barely windy, and there were endless views in every single direction. I was absolutely mind-blown by how pretty it was, and considering how much effort it had been to get to the summit, the views felt extra worthwhile.

We’d really earned our ski down now, and after a short downwards bootpack, we were back at our skis. The turns went too fast! We aimed over toward skier’s right where there was some fluffy looking snow, and after only a few beautiful turns we were back at Anniversary col. These kinds of days make you feel like you really have to make it count.

Anniversary glacier itself was also a beautiful ski. Being fairly low angle we weren’t too worried about avalanches except for a couple steeper rolls. We took some large sections one at a time anyways, keeping an eye out for any instabilities. The snow on the glacier was slightly less perfect than up higher, but still great fun to ski. It was such an incredibly long run that I found my legs getting pretty tired by the time we got back down to the meadows.

The ski back down to the car was sadly not all downhill, and we did a fair amount of shuffling and side-stepping. That said, it was so much fun skiing off Matier that it’s hard to complain! It was a great day overall, and we got lucky to have such an awesome weather window to complete this summit.