Went ski touring to Rae Glacier yesterday Nov 14.
Trail to Elbow Lake and on to the morraine of Rae Glacier
is well packed by snow shoers with only the odd rock or root sticking
out. In the morraines, the snow coverage is more skimpy due to heavy
wind effect and we ended up carrying the skis once or twice for
shorter sections.
Snow in the Rae Glacier Bowl was wind-affected,
however we found good quality skiing on 20 - 40 cm of soft slab. Temps
around -15C with moderate to strong northerly winds caused some wind
loading in the upper bowl while we were there. Test pit at 2700
meters showed HS of 160 cm (total depth of snow). Soft surface slab
of 25 cm over graupel on top of a thin temperature crust. The
temperature crust is much more pronounced in lower elevations. The base and
mid-pack appeared surprisingly well consolidated with no significant
shears in a compression test. A concern would be the increasing depth
of the windslab as you climb higher in the bowl and towards the saddle. We
turned around just before reaching the first band of rock on the left
side.
We also had a look at some ice climbs but only
from the road. Amadeus is looking relatively good higher up but doesn't
reach the bottom (which I believe is pretty standard), Sinatra doesn't appear to
be in, Kidd Falls is looking pretty good and as far as I could see,
Saddam's Insane is pretty phat at least in the upper part that is visible from
the road.
Happy trails!
Jorg Wilz
Mountain Guide (IFMGA /
UIAGM)