[MCR] Bow Hut Area & Little Crowfoot Peak - Rockies

Howdy,

Just back from two days Skiing around the Bow Hut area, and a few obs to pass on. 

We spent the day yesterday skiing into, and yo-yo skiing above the Bow Hut and today wandered across to Little Crowfoot on the opposite side of the valley.

No new avalanche activity observed while we were there, aside from two Cornice failures (Sz. 1.0), one failing from a E face on the "Onion Skin", and the other down the E Face of a ridge running NW from the summit of Little Crowfoot. Neither of the releases triggered the slopes below. Snowed lightly all day today with minimal solar affect, only trace accumulations of snow. 

Surface Hoar is continuing to grow, and although it's been battered a bit by winds in the alpine it still looks as though it's going to give us issues once burried. Widespread at treeline and below. We didn't spend much time on solar aspects, so not much news on the surface hoar or sun-crust situation happening there.

For the most part, the snowpack seemed strong in the alpine, the midpack extremely well settled, and doing a good job of bridging the deeper instabilities, but that strength was certainly not evident absolutely everywhere. 

Given the avalanches that came off Vulture Peak last week, we still approached leeward terrain below ridgecrests with eyes open, and sticking to well supported terrain. 

Skinning up today we dug a pit on a lee feature (NE Aspect / 2800m. / 30 degree incline) just below ridgecrest on Little Crowfoot Peak. I was interested to see if there was any weakness still lingering from last week, similar to what the bigger slides on Vulture Peak had failed on. 

I saw 2 very clean shears, failing in the upper end of the moderate range down 30cm's and the other down 45cm's. The failures showed up consistently in a few different tests. Both were sudden in fracture character and failing on small facet layers. Seemed like the probability of getting that layer to fail was low for us given where we were skiing today, but certainly made me pay more attention to the steep lee, unsupported, and convex features while we were up in the alpine.

Coverage on the glacier was variable but consistently 200+cm's.

Lot's of thin spots below the toe of the glacier, and plenty of rocks just lurking below the surface on the run/pitch down through the moraines. The creek bed is well filled in and travel was quick on the way out to Bow Lake, skins off from the summit of Little Crowfoot, right back to the car.

Great trip up, and still able to get some fresh lines in up there today!

Have fun out there!

Mike Trehearne

ACMG Alpine Guide & Assistant Ski Guide

www.yamnuska.com

mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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