Helen Shoulder Glades

I'd been battling the flu for the previous four and a half days and was feeling a bit ragged.  Still, it had finally snowed after a three week drought and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) was getting the better of me.  Very good skiing on a lot of terrain can be found about less than 30 minutes' drive north from Lake Louise on Hwy 93.  Helen Shoulder Glades is one of those areas, and there are numerous lines on several aspects of the shoulder for skiing down, all with varying steepness and presence or absence of trees.

Low angled slopes ~30° facing SE.  The leftmost ski tracks are mine - near the big tree.

It was an amazing sunny springlike day.  The snow was perfect on the first run.  Then we went to ski the steeper burned glades to towards the center and climbers' right of the bowl.

Traversing around Helen Shoulder

 Cirque Peak became visible on the other side of Helen Shoulder.

Cirque Peak from Helen Shoulder - snow covered and magnificent.

On the slopes facing more to the southwest we talked to a couple who had just skied it (scooped Seyil's line) and reported cracking on the upper third of the slopes.  This discomforting sign plus my tiredness resulted in me lobbying for as conservative a line as possible down what now looked like much steeper slopes than I was up for by now.  There was a soft slab about 30 cm below the new storm snow, which Seyil easily broke through, but for me a foot would punch through intermittently into the less dense snow underneath, making for surprising losses of footing while traveling at speed, which I thought was rather unfair (and unnerving, and bruised my poor fragile ego).  Considering that I was still beaten up by the flu, I should be pretty happy with the day.  Regardless, FOMO didn't let me down - it was an absolutely gorgeous day, it hasn't snowed in the five days since then and there's no snow in next week's forecast, and I am back to having Flu for company.