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
_______________________________________________
These observations and opinions are those of the person who submitted them. The
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continuity. Conditions differ greatly over time and space due to the variable
nature of mountain weather and terrain. Application of this information
provides no guarantee of increased safety. Do not use the Mountain Conditions
Report as the sole factor in planning trips or making decisions in the field.
Please check out http://acmg.ca/mcr for more information.
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