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Simon Robins and I just spent 4 days in the Bugaboos with a group. We climbed the NW ridge of Eastpost and one of the Pigeon Feathers via the Pigeon Fork of the Bugaboo Glacier.
Overall great conditions for general mountaineering. On the glaciers there is 15-20 cm of snow on older, hard surfaces and one has to be careful right at the old firn line where crevasses are thinly bridged. On the rock there is minimal snow on solar aspects below 2900 m. Yesterday, Friday, we saw a size 1.5 run off the north face of Marmolata and a large size 2 out of the Anniversary Chute, both wet snow avalanches after a night with no freeze.
All the eastern spires are dry on the solar aspects and parties were climbing McTech on the sunny days. The central spires are snowy but there is a possibility that a sunny route on the west face of Snowpatch would be doable on a day with no wind - Surf's Up perhaps? Lower angle terrain such as Pigeon is holding more snow and would be slippery. The Howsers are plastered but I bet the mixed routes are still snow over rock until we get a warmer spell that gets some water flowing...maybe this week!
A thunderstorm last night put down a trace of snow but today's sun should clear that off and conditions tomorrow should be as we saw them over the past few days.
Mark Klassen Mountain Guide
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