Yesterday we went up Cerise, Aniversary Glacier, climbed Slalok, down the N Face and out the Joffre Lakes trail.
Cerise Creek has little snow. The bridges over the creeks near the highway are well covered and easy to cross. We crossed to the west side of the Cerise creek and joined the summer trail around the creek coming down from the north face of Joffre. Seems to be much better travel on that side early season.
The Anniversary glacier was well covered with snow but above the 7000 foot mark it was very wind effected. There was a small (SZ 2) natural avalanche that had come down the regular route on Joffre within the past 12 hours. It was a dense surface layer that slid and it crossed the on ramp access from the "Motel 66" camp half way up the glacier on the north side.
The Matier Glacer was wind hammered and we didn't hang around long with 30k winds and -17 deg.
We ski cut a size 2 slide in the gully on the lower half of the North Face of Slalok: 10-30cm deep, pencil hard layer. We skied the avalanche debris which spoke to us with multiple whumpfs. The slide started at 2100m and the snow settled every now and then until we were at 1700m The face needs a little more snow to cover the ice tongue in the middle. In general the skiing was not good.
The descent/ascent lines from Upper Joffre Lake onto the Matier Glacier on the north and south end of the Icefall are not in shape yet. In an emergency one could get down the standard north side gully to the obvious moraine but I would not recommend it. The Tzil Glacier looked like a good ski.
We skied nervously across the Upper and Middle Joffre lakes staying spaced out and away from the creeks coming in and out of the lakes. There was less than a half meter of snow at the Upper lake. Just below the middle lake we had to take our skis off and walk to the highway. We didn't cross the lower lake because of thin ice.
SUMMARY: The skiing was better at or below treeline in Cerise Creek, than in the Joffre Lake drainage. In the Alpine watch out for a thin hard surface slab on all aspects that is reactive to skiers . Joffre Lakes trail is not in shape for skiing.
Conny Amelunxen
MG
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