[MCR] Kootenay Burn

Subject: [MCR] Kootenay Burn
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 19:12:12 -0500 (EST)
I spent the day ski touring up & down the south shoulder that runs down to the Marble Canyon parking lot with Karsten Heuer up to about 2600m. In the right conditions this is a beautiful tour with over 900m of relief and good skiing. Today wasn't quite one of those days :)

Moderate SW winds and mainly overcast with some broken skies throughout the day. Cold, as low as -20C observed.

Snowpack at treeline is shallow and variable, about 70-90 cm deep. The top 20cm (recent storm snow) in sheltered area is still fairly low density. In open glades below treeline it's slabby and somewhat reactive on top of the otherwise totally facetted snowpack. The alpine is totally wind hammered with hard slabs in lee features and windscoured on exposed aspects.

We were very careful our use of terrain and avoided larger slopes even in the "trees" (or rather the burnt remnants thereof). We did not observe any whoomfing and only limited cracking, but in places the bond quality between the storm snow slab and the underlying facets was very weak and produced very easy hand shear results.

Travel in general was moderate with typically boot top penetration (though often knee deep with plenty of holes). Ski quality in general was poor -- upside down and bottomless -- and we followed our uptrack on our way down for the last ~150m of elevation because it was so desperate.

In short, it's still too early to recommend ski touring in Kootenay Park right now, but you might have an enjoyable day out if you're willing to balance a good measure of caution with a little adventure.

Regards,
Tom Wolfe
ASG/AAG
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