| Finished the last trip of the season yesterday, Sun/Mon April 29/30, climbing Mt Joffre from a camp at Aster Lake.
A pretty thin snowpack at lower elevations with the occasional skis off and walking through the bush. Crusts were generally carrying enough to travel even in the warmer part of the day (+4 at 2000 m Sunday afternoon), but the skiing down isn't that great.
Above 2700 m or so it is still pretty wintry with not much in the way of springtime crusts (-11 at 2300 m on Monday morning). There are variable amounts of cold snow from the April 28-29 storm, up to 50cm or more in some wind affected areas (the face of Joffre), atop a thin melt-freeze crust. Strong winds on Sunday caused wind effect in all open areas, in some areas there were crusts and others had more slab-like characteristics with a significant weak layer between the windcrust/slab and the buried melt-freeze crust. Walking up the face of Joffre (skis off) we wandered around a fair bit avoiding pans of slabby-feeling snow, staying in areas where the surface was more wind-etched rather than spots where the surface was smooth and the snow had a drum-like feel. Bootpacking was generally OK, usually half a boot although occasionally deeper.
We didn't ski the face of Joffre due to the concerns about areas of slabs, we wanted to be able to walk down slowly and avoid them, and the skiing would not have been that good up there either as it had a fair bit of wind effect. Surprisingly decent skiing in soft windcrust a bit lower in the alpine, and in a bit of new snow atop melt freeze crusts at treeline/moraine elevations.
Even though it seems most of the avalanche bulletins have shut down for the season, it doesn't seem to me like it is a typical springtime snowpack out there especially at higher elevations. There are reports of large dry snow slab avalanches in the interior ranges over the past couple of days, and I could see that in the Rockies we have potential for similar conditions (although we didn't see any avalanche activity on our trip). Looks like it is still heads up even though it is May! Mark Klassen Mountain Guide
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