Sunburst

1/10/24

Heading out into Turnagain Pass on a beautiful sunny day in January with our sights set on Pete’s North led us right to Sunburst. There’s obviously a little explaining on how that is the case, so let me begin. Initially there were three of us heading out into Turnagain on another day off from ski school, and one buddy was dead set to ski Pete’s North after a historic day the winter before. In the morning, that buddy bailed on the trip, and myself and the other friend, Caroline, were left without a third partner to head into the pass with. As we approached the Johnson Pass trailhead in an attempt to still ski Pete’s, we found that the trailhead had not been plowed all winter. 

I had been up Sunburst before, but only on early season storm days. This meant I had only skied the lower bit of the mountain, and had never really seen the main South face. As we turned around from the Johnson Pass trailhead ready to pick another peak to ski, we were quickly met by glances of the near perfect pitch that the Sunburst offers. We both agreed to head up and check out what all the hype with Sunburst was about.

We parked at the Taylor Creek parking lot, and geared up ready to enjoy some views and hopefully find some powder from a recent storm. Our first steps out of the parking lot filled us with joy as we realized we had some of the best snow of the season underneath our skis. A right side up storm had fallen across the pass, leaving the snow in dreamy conditions.

Following the common skin track quickly led us up to the ridge, where views began to open up onto the ridge of Tincan. My jaw dropped when I first saw the amount of skiing just off of such a popular spot. 

As we continued, the views around remained incredible, and the deep tracks of skiers before us heightened our stoke. Not only did we spot plenty of tracks, also a few skiers we were sharing the zone with. We knew we wanted to walk out past where most were skiing as fresh wide open tracks were our goal.

After walking the ridge to just before the peak of sunburst, we found a panel we wanted to ski. There were tracks on it, but we found our spot to spoon the turns and share the run with others behind us. Standing at the top of our run, Caroline had felt the sense of excitement coming from me and asked what my favorite ski run ever was. Unsure on how to answer, I told her I like skiing properly angled powder but failed to provide an example.

I skied first, and took the pitch to the bottom with the biggest grin on my face. The snow was as good as predicted as it provided both responsiveness and blowing powder. The whole pitch continues at a very consistent slope angle for around 1200 feet. Wide open, no features, just you, snow, and 30-some degrees of decline. 

Caroline followed after, hooting and hollering just as I was before her. I got back to the question she asked up top, and I told her that I had picked my favorite run, Sunburst. We talked about our run and appreciated our tracks in the snow before the short winter day forced us back to the car after only one run.

We enjoyed the rest of the skiing to the car, Sunburst really does provide good skiing all the way to the parking lot. Upon reaching the car, we both agreed we were happy with how the day turned out, and that we’d be back to ski Pete’s another day. We had struck gold up on Sunburst however, and wouldn’t trade that for anything.