Author: Adam Hawkins
General area: Raven Lake
Trip start date: 2021-11-27
Number of nights: 1
Went for an overnight at Raven Lake this weekend. Road in to the trailhead is basically ski or snowmobile only. We got lucky and lined up some friends to ferry us in on sleds. ~50 cm snow at the trailhead allows for skinning the entire way to the cabin. We got up to the cabin mid-late afternoon (about 3 hours on trail), as near hurricane winds quickly made a Bota box more appealing than a headlamp ridge ski. It took perhaps 5 hours to get the chill out of the cabin with the efficient stove, but the cabin holds heat well once you get it up to temperature.
The creek is scoured dry, but we could still access lake water near the outlet. Having a little hand-operated pump would be awesome for filling up lake water to be filtered/boiled. We wished we had brought some extra electric lanterns to help light up the space. The upstairs foamies were great and with our small party, doubling up foamies made for a luxurious evening.
Some of our party stayed an extra night, but four of us had to come out the next morning. Rapidly rising temperatures made for a somewhat gloppy ski out, but the sticky snow worked well for controlling speed as we skied out mostly on the skin track (snow depth was a bit too low for much tree skiing). A stashed sled made for an easy ride out back to the car just off the highway.
Read a MIN report from this trip here: https://www.avalanche.ca/map?panel=mountain-information-network-submissions%2F2f99af92-bab2-4f46-af60-481a42a99f07