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Spent a few days exploring the Toby/Hamill Group of the Purcells. This area is a beautiful wilderness mountaineering destination in the heart of the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy, where solitude is almost assured. During our stay we found generally good conditions for mountain travel. We arrived in the mountains at the tail end of a wet spell and found rain soaked snow on the glaciers below 2700m and a few cm's of fresh storm snow above that. There was a small amount of fresh snow and verglass on the rock in the high alpine but that was gone by Friday afternoon with the return of the clear weather. By Saturday things has dried out completely with great glacier travel and warm alpine rock. There is now quite a bit of bare ice exposed at the glacier toes and many crevasses are opening up. Two recent size 2 slab avalanches were observed, both releasing down to glacier ice on steep northwesterly aspects at around 2800m. There were still some significant cornices lingering on the ridges and we observed first hand evidence of a large cornice fall upon arriving at the summit of Mt Hamill. The upper southeast ridge and the summit itself is a massive cornice, and one chunk the size of two vans had very recently released and entrained a bunch of snow off the face below, resulting in a size 2 avalanche. Given the amount of snow and cornices lingering in the alpine, I suspect there is still potential for similar events to occur with the forecasted warm weather. Jeff Volp Ski Guide Kimberley, BC _______________________________________________________________
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