Reid Holmes and I skied the Wapta traverse from May 3 to May 5, 2006, spending our first night at Peyto Hut and the second at Balfour Hut. We ascended Habel, made a ski ascent of Thompson, and a partial ascent of Balfour (see below).
See Reid's photos.
We decided to try for both (although we'd later run low on energy) and headed for Thompson. We met a pair from Alaska on splitboards and skied to the summit with them.
After two summits, the sun started getting to us and we spent over half an hour sitting on our packs, sipping a few millilitres of water (since we each only had one litre for the day). The climb up to the Olive-St. Nicholas seemed long given the heat and dehydration and we opted not to ski up Gordon. Instead we zipped down the Vulture Glacier to the Balfour Hut.
At the hut were a guided group of three and another group of four. Reid and I enjoyed a leisurely five-course dinner with plenty of re-hydration before an early bedtime.
From the col we skied down to have a look at the Trolltinder Glacier and the route up Mount Balfour. We'd skied too far and returned over the col to climb over a notch and back down to the Trolltinder Glacier. We skied a short distance along the glacier, dropped our skis, and kicked steps up to the east ridge of Balfour. After a short walk along the ridge, we realized we were off route, or so we thought. We descended back to our skis, at which point we met the group of four from the hut. They informed us we'd indeed be on the right route. Instead of reversing our steps and climbing back up we decided to head back to the Balfour col (which is too bad since it would have a great day to summit Balfour and we weren't so far from its summit).