My friend and fellow guide Christian Jensen and I have spent the last week Jan 19-26 skiing with a group out of the Michel Trudeau cabin in Kokanee Glacier Park. In the early part of the week we were skiing on a wide variety of wind affected surfaces between 1850m and 2750m. The only powder skiing to be found was on sheltered east aspects at and below tree line. We found soft and hard windslabs at all elevations but none were reactive to skier traffic. We observed widespread surface hoar growing to tree line up to 5mm in size but expect to find much larger surface hoar at lower elevations where the valley cloud had been sitting during the early part of the week. The sunny days early in the week created a sun crust on all steep solar aspects. On the night of the 23rd we received 20cm of new snow with moderate winds form the southwest. Temperatures during the storm were steady around -1 and the new snow was found on the 24th and 25th to be bonding well to the previous surfaces. Natural avalanche activity with the new storm snow was limited to a few very steep unsupported pockets at ridge top. We skied only northerly aspects with the new snow and had no reaction to skiing steep unsupported terrain between 1850-2400m. By the time we left yesterday another 5cm of snow had fallen bringing the depth of new snow on the Jan 23rd interface to roughly 25cm. The old snow that was buried on the 23rd consists of windslab, sun crust, surface hoar, and weak facetted snow. It is great to have powder skiing again but caution will be necessary in the near future as we are expecting that this layer will become reactive as the new snow begins to deepen and settle on this weak interface.
Shawn West
ACMG Ski Guide
Christian Jensen
Assistant Ski Guide
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