A beautiful afternoon today at Bow Summit. Still some decently
soft skiing left especially on anything that tips remotely northerly.
Unfortunately that is also were you find the surface hoar buried about 35 cm
deep and well preserved (10 – 12 mm) at this typical treeline terrain.
Frequent wumpfs and easy to moderate sudden planar shear make for a pretty
spooky feeling. I attribute the lack of skier triggering to the lack of
cohesiveness in the slab where we skied, but that could be different in areas
with different slab characteristics, i.e. wind loading or warming for example.
We also saw some recent (typical spring) slab avalanches on
the south-westerly aspects of Observation
Peak, which started at
ridge line and ran about 600 meters.
We also took a peak at the beautiful male Grizzly that is
hanging out at the usual “bear-hang” on the CP rails - I’m
sure you know where – unfortunately it’s probably just a matter of
time that we’ll read of his demise in the paper…..
Cheers,
Jorg Wilz
Mountain Guide (ACMG / VDBS / IFMGA)
OnTop ltd.
www.ontopmountaineering.com
1-800 506 7177 or (001) 403 678 2717