[MCR] Wapta/Little Yoho Valley

Subject: [MCR] Wapta/Little Yoho Valley
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:13:43 -0400 (EDT)
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
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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
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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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