I spent the past 6 days with Kristina Metzlaff and a group of students
from the College of the Rockies MAST program. We started at Peyto Lake and
exited today via Yoho Pass into Emerald Lake after staying a couple of
days in Little Yoho valley.
Much of what we did overlapped with the Ass't Ski Exam so I'll not repeat
what was already reported.
Weather
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Today things instantly changed from winter to spring: hot, calm winds, and
clear skies with intense sun.
Avalanches
----------
A widespread cycle on all solar aspects (E-S-W) was observed in the
alpine today as we left.
Of note, the recent NW winds and significant snowfall from the spring
squalls (up to 50 cm as of yesterday) has created conditions for slab
avalanches on solar aspects as was observed this afternoon on the Yoho (?)
slidepath, which ran size 3 slab avalanche full path (this is the big
slidepath immediately above the south west end of Emerald Lake) at about
noon time.
Snowpack
--------
Below treeline the snow was close to isothermal (wet and sloppy) on most
aspects by early afternoon.
The Feb 25 surface hoar (down 40-100 cm) is still very scary and affected
our route selection greatly in the alpine. For example, we chose to avoid
going over Isolated Col and opted for the Whaleback Trail instead to
access Little Yoho.
With the widespread meltdown on solar aspects and the worrisome surface
hoar instability on alpine non-solar aspects, today was a good day to go
home.
Regards,
Tom Wolfe
_______________________________________________
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Please check out http://acmg.ca/mcr for more information.
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