[MCR] Conditions in the Roger's Pass

Hi Everyone,

I've been teaching an AST 2 course in the Roger's Pass area.  Thus far we've skied in the Connaught Creek area the last 2 days.

Yesterday (Dec 17th) saw snow falling less than a cm per hour in the morning and up to 1cm per hour as the day moved into the afternoon.  It was accompanied by light to moderate winds once we climbed up to tree line elevation (2000 meters).  The temperature most of the day ranged from hovering at zero in the valley bottoms to -1.0 at tree line and hence we observed the conditions becoming very slabby as we got to our high elevation of 2100 meters with increasing wind.  Ski cutting and compression tests produced easy results down 25 cms at the interface between the new storm snow and the sandwich of faceted grains, surface hoar and cold stellars.

Today we slid up Connaught Creek again (AC closures on the highway limiting our options) and we saw winds subsiding early in the early AM, temps in the same range as the day prior which promoted settlement of the storm snow into a cohesive soft slab and consequently the same interface behaving in the same manner as the day previous.  Lots of settlements in the flats (valley bottom) and some settlements and cracking about the skis in the Ursus trees areas where we were skiing and digging.  We did some mechanical tests and had easy to moderate compression tests down 30 and 45 cm's respectively and we also did a Rutschblock test and got a score of 2 down 30 cm's.  Ski cutting small features verified easy failures on the same layer.

We noticed one healthy Size 2 natural avalanche that likely pulled out during the storm (rapid loading) at the far end of the drainage off of Cheops.  Of note, the Frequent Flyer path slid overnight during the cycle, however the Grizzly path has not yet ran and I didn't notice any debris mid path or higher up in the track.

Given the high hazard we kept our exposure to a minimum and exercised very cautious travel today.  This layer (Dec 10th) layer will persist for some time and I'll be giving this interface the respect it deserves over the next few weeks.

Have Fun Out There.

Paddy Jerome
ACMG IFMGA Mountain Guide
#205-176 Kananaskis Way
Canmore, Alberta
T1W 3E4 Canada
(C)403-609-0795

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