[MCR] Bow/Balfour

Subject: [MCR] Bow/Balfour
Date: Sun, 1 Jan 2006 15:09:16 -0700
Kathy, Will and I spent Dec 29-31 wandering about the Wapta Icefield.

Over the trip winds were generally moderate from the west, with strong winds at ridgetops on Dec 30. Moderate snow transport at ridgetop most of the time. Max of -6 at Bow Lake Dec 29, minimum -15 at Olive/St Nick col Dec 29. -9.5 at Bow Hut the morning of Dec 31. Regular flurries left a few cm of new snow over the trip. Visibility varied from obscured to broken.

Approach to Bow Hut is as per my post for Little Crowfoot a few days ago. Up on the ice we saw about 2 m of snow at around 2700 m at the head of the Bow Glacier, with deeper snowpacks at higher elevations in sheltered areas. The light was never very good but it seemed that the icefield was quite smooth with few visible crevasses. Ski penetration was generally ankle deep, minimal wind effect in the most recent snowfalls although with probing it seemed there was a 40cm thick wind slab atop a thin weakness, beneath the 10-15cm soft surface snow layers. Cornices are large.

On the 30th poor visibility, loading winds, occasionally intense flurries, suspected large cornices and unknown crevasse difficulties created too many "ifs" for us to go from Balfour Hut over the Balfour High Col to Scott Duncan. I like to have good visibility or a Low to Moderate Danger rating (or, better yet, both) to consider committing to that place. We had neither so we climbed Olive on the way back to Bow that day.

Good skiing on the Bow Glacier on Dec 30 and 31. Lots of people though.

The only avalanche activity we saw was exiting on Dec 31. A large size 2 had run sometime in the previous 24 hours in the path beyond the end of Bow Lake, on the south flank of Mt Jimmy Simpson. It came out of steep, unskiable cliffs and gullies to the right of the waterfalls. It was a slab, about 40cm thick, initiating on a steep slope in the lee of a ridge at treeline and cleaning out the cliffs below. It ran about 2/3 of the fan in the runout zone.

I'm also pretty sure I heard a sizeable avalanche off Olive during the wind event of Dec 30, but couldn't see it in poor visibility.

I rated the Danger as Considerable in the alpine and treeline and Low below treeline, throughout the trip.

Mark Klassen
Mountain Guide
mark@xxxxxxxxxxxx
www.alpinism.com