I spent the past week guiding on the Wapta, We had unsettled weather
throughout the week with a couple of short storms, light
precipitation, and moderate, variable winds but also plenty of broken
skies and sun and excellent powder skiing every day.
Avalanche concerns to pay attention to currently are wind slabs from
the recent storm (touchy/possible to size 2), sluffing in very steep
sheltered alpine terrain (possible to size 1.5) and cornice failures
(possible to size 2.0).
The glaciers are covered in a 275-350 cm snowpack with the exception
of thin exposed areas (e.g. the approach to Peyto Hut where I probed
as shallow as 180 cm). The lower route to Balfour High Col (adjacent
to the rock outcrop) and down to Scott Duncan Hut was straightforward.
The underlying snowpack is well settled. The April 5 facet/crust
interface is now covered by up to 40 cm of snow. Test profiles and ski
cutting throughout the week show this layer to be generally well
bonded. On April 8, a ski cut on a very steep unsupported wind loaded
roll (NE aspect) on Mt Gordon produced an initially small slab
avalanche (10 cm deep and 50 m wide) which after dropping over a
second very steep roll stepped down to the April 5 facet/crust
interface (down ~50 cm) propagating 200 m wide and running about 100 m
to the flat glacier below (size 1.5). Otherwise, in test profiles and
in aggressive ski cutting of very steep alpine features to 48 degrees
this layer was nonreactive.
April 10-11 a storm produced another 10-15 cm of snow in the alpine.
Winds first from the N and then from the SW resulted in moderate wind
loading mainly on N and E aspects. This morning skiing out from Scott
Duncan hut we noticed a widespread avalanche cycle (to sz 1.5) in the
storm snow interfaces. The E face of Mt. Niles had numerous sluffs, a
couple of sz 1.0-1.5 slabs, and a sz 1.5 cornice failure from the
previous 24 hours. Today the wind slabs appeared to be settling with
minor cracking noticed on steep alpine wind loaded features.
The ski out to the highway from Sherbrooke Lake was icy and fast but
all things considered for this time of year it's in very good
condition.
Regards,
Tom Wolfe
Mountain Guide ACMG/IFMGA
twolfe@xxxxxxxxxxx www.sawback.com
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