Good overnight refreeze in spite of only -3C
at the Yoho Valley parking lot this morning at 7AM.
Good travel throughout the trip and we opted to head towards a saddle on the north
ridge of the main summit as the steep, last pitch to the main summit was
threatened by a good size cornice. We stopped about 20 vertical meters short of
our destination, as we encountered soft wind slabs sitting on a thin melt
freeze crust, which wasn’t carrying anymore above 2400 meters. A couple
of smaller whumpfs and a midpack that felt pretty unconsolidated on the
ski-pole test made us turn around.
Some clouds in the pm kept the alpine reasonably
cool and we found good skiing on up to 20cm of recent snow, which stayed dry to
2200m on easterly aspects and down to about 2000m on straight northern aspects.
Further down in the avalanche pass the skiing was still pleasant with up to
5cms of moist snow on the recent melt-freeze crust.
The snow carried today on the way out along
the road and in the old tracks around 2.30 pm, but some deep, recent “sinkholes”
suggested that someone had much worse conditions coming out on a previous day.
Cheers,
Jorg Wilz
Mountain Guide (ACMG / IFMGA)
OnTop ltd.
www.ontopmountaineering.com