[MCR] Crowfoot Glades & Simpsons Pass

Saturday, January 28: Crowfoot Glades
A great day skiing in the glades.  On average around –10 at treeline with moderate gusting strong winds out of the S-SW.  Anything in the open had that funky feeling wind slab, the sort that you can’t trust.  I was definitely thinking about propagations but heard no settlements all day.  We stuck to the treeline terrain and skied far skiers left on the old bed surfaces of a huge cycle that ripped through the area sometime ago.  Excellent skiing in the steeps, just had to watch out of the odd nasty chunk of debris in the flat light.  We also skied one of the steep chutes off the front back into the marsh, it all slid during the last cycle and offered great skiing again. 

Considerable at treeline and Moderate below treeline.  Cirque and Observation looked absolutely wind blasted.

Sunday, January 29: Healy-Simpsons-Sunshine Circuit
I can’t add too much to Grant’s report, except for the thundering whumfing and shooting cracks in the meadows above Simpson’s Pass on the way to Wawa Ridge.  Definitely very low confidence on any feature.  Skiing through very low angled terrain we caused a whumpf that traveled a few meters to a 25 degree slope, you could hear the settlement travel quite a distance (>100m).  The slope fully cracked and wanted to move, just lacked the incline.  Below treeline was a very different feeling with quite a strong mid-pack compared to treeline, punching track up from Simpson’s Pass was quite straight forward and while we didn’t find the most elegant way through the cliff bands stability wasn’t on my mind too much, although I didn’t test my theory too much either.

We were at the top of Wawa around 4pm and it was blowing like crazy and starting to snow.  The clouds to the west looked like they were bringing some good precip, lets hope so!

Considerable in the alpine and treeline, Moderate below treeline.


Ian Tomm