We did a three day trip on the Wapta over the last three days with a night
at Bow Hut and one at Mistaya Lodge.
By Tuesday morning there was approximately 20 cm of new storm snow with
little wind effect.
Travel over the glaciers is good with well over 2 metres of coverage on
average. Wind exposed rolls and steeper broken areas seem to have
considerably less, however, and there are a number of sagging bridges on
the crevasses. With good visibility we travelled with harnesses on and only
roped up for a crevassed section near between Habel and Baker. In white
conditions the rope definitely would be required.
Ski conditions on the Wildcat ( Baker) Glacier were excellent Tuesday with
30 cm ski penetration, and there are a number of wands put in by Dave
Bernie at the Lodge to help avoid the crevasses on the glacier.
Temperatures dropped to -19 by Wednesday morning and winds in the moderate
range overnight and throughout the day were rapidly creating wind slabs.
The travel was somewhat more difficult with double penetration through wind
skin and ski conditions had deteriorated to fair in breakable wind crust.
Tracks were being blown in within minutes. The Baker Trapper col had a 25
cm thick wind slab over a previous hard wind crust that would have been
problematic on a steeper feature.
Numerous natural slab avalanches up to size 1.5 were noted on steep lee
features. Most occurred on northerly aspects on slopes above 40 degrees and
involved only the recent storm snow. The suspected failure layer was
surface hoar buried March 08 as some avalanches were triggered by loose
sluffs running from higher elevations and then pulling 20-30 cm thick slabs
on mid elevation planar features.
There were lots of parties around Bow Hut enjoying the sun and new snow
with several aggressive lines being skied. No skier triggered avalanches
were observed, but it is my guess that it was only the lack of propagation
potential with the still quite soft slab that prevented some slopes from
sliding. Things are probably more tricky now with another full day of
moderate winds. There are now three major layers of concern in the upper
pack: The March 08, the Feb 08 and the Jan 25, any of which might be
triggered with the snowfall and wind combination we have had.
Brad White
Mountain Guide
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