BUGABOOS TO ROGERS PASS SKI TRAVERSE

Bugs to Rogers is the oldest and most iconic of the Grand Traverses, revered for its spectacular alpine scenery, steep slopes, heavily crevassed glaciers, and complex terrain. The route starts at the head of Bugaboo Creek before ascending Bugaboo Glacier, snaking across the peaks of the Purcell Mountains through Bugaboo Provincial Park, and then into the Selkirk Mountains through Glacier National Park.

The route is 130 kilometres (80 miles) long, with a total elevation gain of 10,000 metres (32,808 feet). It typically takes eight to ten days to complete, during which participants carry their food, avalanche safety gear, and camping equipment.

It is the most popular traverse of all the traverses, and for good reasons. This 8-12-day journey travels through spectacular country, follows a good line along the crest of the Purcells and Selkirks, has many technical sections and some good descents. Several huts along the route contribute to the popularity. It does, however, have some steep cruxes that have scared or even stopped teams in the past. On this one, weather is always the wild card. You often have to fly to the Bugaboos by helicopter.

Fast and light traverses didn’t become a thing until the new millennium. Kylee Toth’s style of traversing, called a speed traverse or a fastest known time (FKT) attempt, is relatively new. When Toth attempted to set a new FKT for Bugaboos to Rogers Pass in May 2022, the gear had improved over time, and the efficiency in movement had also improved significantly.

Chic Scott concurs, to a point. “I know that there’s something very nice in moving swiftly and efficiently in the mountains, and each generation has to do something new to make your mark,” he says, but he adds that the grand traverses shouldn’t be turned into a race. “I went to the mountains to get away from all that sort of bullshit.”

 “Chris Rowat and Peter Goodier on the last day of the Bugaboos to Rogers Pass traverse, with Mount Sir Donald in the background. Photo: Kari Medig”

History
The Bugs to Rogers route was first completed in 1958 by four Americans from Dartmouth College. They did it over nine days in June, combining skiing with bushwhacking on foot.
In 1973, Scott and three of his friends became the first to do the traverse entirely on skis. It took them 15 days because they had to hole up in a tent for five days and wait out a storm.
In 2005, Jon Walsh, Douglas Sproul and Troy Jungen set the first official speed record with a time of 80 hours.
In 2021, Greg Hill, Andrew McNab, and Adam Campbell established the fastest time of 53.5 hours.
In 2021, Leah Evans, Marie-France Roy and Madeleine Martin-Reney were not looking to set an FKT or extend a grand traverse. For many, ski traverses are epic enough just the way they are. And although there is better tech and gear, adventurers are doing them pretty much the same way Scott and his pals did seven decades ago: slow and steady.
Leah Evans is a professional skier, Association of Canadian Mountain Guides (ACMG) hiking guide, and the director of a freeski camp for women called Girls Do Ski. She completed her first grand traverse in 2021 in the customary eight days. She did it with pro snowboarder Marie-France Roy and ACMG ski guide Madeleine Martin-Preney, and she chose the Bugs to Rogers route because it encompasses the peaks she sees from her home in Revelstoke. “The mountains themselves were my major inspiration,” she says. “I wanted to travel through them, to be immersed in them.”
As a woman who has devoted her career to skiing downhill, Evans also saw completing the Bugs to Rogers traverse as a ski-touring rite of passage, a logical progression of the skills, experience, and education she’s amassed since moving to Revelstoke from Rossland in 2010. Looking back on the journey, which was the subject of the documentary film Mind Over Mountain (2021), Evans was very much out of her comfort zone physically. “I was used to doing maybe one big day like that with time to recoup and a warm place to make food,” she says. “But this was like, you’re maxing out your tank and then you’re having to do more stuff [like set up camp]. It was an eye-opening experience. I gained big-scale respect for the mountains.” Is Evans planning on doing any more grand traverses? “I’m good,” she says. For most of us, once in a lifetime is more than enough.

In May 2022, Kylee Toth, Emma Cook-Clarke and Taylor Sullivan took 44 hours and 37 minutes, a monumental time that beat the original 1958 expedition by one whole week. Unlike most, they started at Rogers Pass and headed south to reduce their exposure time on south-facing slopes, which are more prone to avalanches in late spring.
Toth said their pace was comfortable, a speed at which she could take in her surroundings. The main challenges were a lack of sleep and the darkness of night travel. At Mount Thorington, 2,653 metres (8,705 feet), one of the highest peaks on the route, Toth heard baby birds chirping, and she was almost at her limit. Bugs to Rogers Pass was twice the length of any ski traverse she’d done before. But they were close to the finish. It was the adventure of a lifetime!
Toth is a former member of the Canadian national speed skating team and a current ski mountaineering (skimo) racer who competes in World Cup championships. She aspires to represent Canada at the 2026 Olympics, when skimo racing will make its debut.
“This adventure pushed me to the max physically, mentally and is one of those adventures I was both intrigued and terrified of. This route, done in a speed traverse style, has only been done by two other groups that I know of previously, and we all did slightly different route variations.
I am honoured to now be part of this group of finishers after completing it with two strong partners. I am proud of Emma Cook-Clarke and me for becoming the first girls to do a speed push. This wouldn’t have been possible without the open sharing and beta from both previous teams. It is important to me to see women try big, complex and intimidating things, not to prove anything to men, but so that the next generation of female light and fast athletes realize they have a proverbial “seat at the table.”
Although we all go as fast and as efficiently as we can, it’s still a personal journey. Creativity in line choice is available, and the route is not contrived but truly wild and unpredictable, which keeps even the most seasoned veterans on their toes. I am beyond stoked with our effort and can’t say enough about the tenacity and sheer grit of my partners. It seems cliche, but over the 44 hours and 37 minutes it took us, with very little sleep, we laughed and cried.
I am stoked to help the next team that goes for it with beta and planning advice, as the teams before me so gratuitously did. For now, I am still recovering and in awe of the adventure of a lifetime!”

Kylee Toth (right) and Emma Cook-Clarke near Syncline Pass, about 32 hours into their record-breaking 44-hour-long Bugaboos to Rogers speed traverse in May 2022.

This post is a heavily edited extract of Behind The Lines: The Evolution of Ski Traversing in the Kootenays by Jayme Moye, published in Kootenay Mountain Culture magazine. There are also quotes by Chic Scott.