Glacier Skiing at Chatter Creek

The Vertebrae glacier provides extensive glacier skiing and marvellous views at Chatter Creek cat skiing. Vertebrae glacier lies on the eastern slope of Stovepipe Mountain. Access to the glacier is by road that must climb the western side of the mountain and cross to the east near the highest point. The return from Vertebrae glacier offers a variety of great powder skiing on the Windlip, Jo-Pal and Megahooped.

The road to Vertebrae Glacier leaves Vertebrae Lodge to the east. Besides Vertebrae Glacier, the road services Spruce Pass, Mullet Bowl and Steph's Thumb as well as Megahooped & Jo-Pal, and the Windlip. The Mullet Bowl branch now crosses over East Ridge, north of Super Spruce to provide a pickup route from East Creek.
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From the lodge, the road climbs across the Home Run on the south end of Lodge Ridge and enters the alpine in the Spruce Creek gully between Lodge Ridge and the Megahooped trees (see Fig. 1a to the right).    The road can be seen traversing the gully in the lower left corner of the photo below.

Beyond the Megahooped Trees, the road forks and the Spruce Pass road branches to the north. The main road then turns back to climb above the Megahooped trees where it again forks. The main road climbs to a bench and turns north again to cross above Megahooped before passing out of sight in the photo and onto the Windlip. On the Windlip, the road climbs to the Keyhole, which is the entry to Vertebrae Glacier. This is hidden in the photo by the ridge at the top left-center of the photo. Near the Keyhole, the road again forks and a branch continues to the top of the Windlip and the entrance, at the top center of the photos, to Jo-Pal. Click Fig. 1b at the right to see these names marked on the photo.

From the fork above the Megahooped trees, a branch leaves to the south to Mullet Bowl and Steph's Thumb.



Scroll down to see vistas and ski terrain on the Road to Vertebrae Glacier. This site is a part of the Chatter News, which gives a client's perspective on snowcat skiing at Chatter Creek.