Back to winter in the Rockies now from a mild week and a half of touring
on the coast with Ian Kirschner. In short, great stability but bad skiing.
The last four days (Fri-Mon) were spent doing an extended Spearhead
Traverse.
SNOWPACK: Well consolidated snowpack. Surface conditions above 1700 m are
a wide variety of crusts: wind, sun, temperature, making for terrible
skiing for the most part. Below 1900 m, especially in wind-sheltered
areas, surface hoar is developing; on the "Musical Bumps" surface hoar to
15 mm was observed. Between about 1900 m and 2500 m on sheltered N facing
slopes we found the occasional decent turns. On Saturday morning the N
face of Tremor was skiied by one person in a group of four--he reported OK
conditions (PS, if this group has any good photos of the trip I'd love to
get a couple, twolfe [at} sawback {dot] com). In general the facetting is
not breaking down the various crusts as quickly as we'd hoped. On Sunday
(Jan 28) steep south facing slopes made for OK corn skiing for a couple of
hours in the afternoon. Below 1900 m the temperature and sun crusts are
pervasive and strong.
WEATHER: Since last Monday/Tuesday's storm the coast has had mainly clear,
mild, calm weather with daily highs in the low single digits (1-3 C) and
overnight lows not dropping below -6 C in the alpine. On Sunday night
things cooled down a bit and Monday was cool and overcast until later in
the day when the skies cleared and the wind began to howl up high from the
NE, moving the only loose snow available -- some surface facets -- into
heavy pillows on lee slopes and cross gullies.
AVALANCHES: No new avalanches were observed since the last widespread
cycle as reported by Craig McGee last week. No new cornice failures. The
cornice chunks reported by Craig at the top of Overlord Gl are truly
impressive.
COVERAGE: The snowpack here is an impressive 4m+ on the glaciers. We did a
bunch of loop trips during our tour. All of these tours take you into
pretty big glacier country, and take you onto and close to some serious
clopes. Good stability, visibility, and preferably good light is a must
for all of them. Here are our observations:
Saturday am: Down Shudder Gl, up Shatter: good coverage, we were able to
avoid all sags easily by trending to the right. We started up the Shudder
and crossed over to the Shatter where the glaciers join down low.
Sunday am: Down Ripsaw Gl, up Naden Gl: Going down Ripsaw you can avoid
all sags on the far left, but this was raked by debris from solar slouging
from the end of the last storm. So we skiied through a bit of the bottom
icefall and found that the coverage was good enough to weave through the
crevasses easily. Surprisingly decent turns in the middle of the run.
Sunday pm: Down Iago, up Naden: excellent coverage on both Iago and Naden
Monday am: Down Curtain, up Macbeth: Curtain felt pretty committing.
There
is a large crevasse and small cliff in the middle, which can be avoided by
traversing out right on very steep slopes (40+ deg).Getting up from
Fitzsimmons onto the Macbeth brings you onto very steep W facing slopes.
The traverse itself is, as Craig reported, in great shape right now--until
the next snowfall that is...
Regards,
Tom Wolfe
AAG
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