[MCR] Mt Hector - Canadian Rockies

Two guests and I made an attempt on Mount Hector this past weekend. We followed an old skin track up to the first steep slopes of the tour, past old wet-loose avalanche debris and up a boot pack trail to the lower-angle terrain above. 1-2cm of new snow gave the appearance of adequate coverage but was only just enough to cover shallow rocks. We had to hike up a steeper moraine due to lack of snow. We roped up on Hector Glacier but turned back at ~3100m/10,000' due to very low visibility, and the increased potential for crevasse fall, as well as concerns of instability as we contoured around the right side of the glacier towards the summit. We'd had a couple of minor whumpfs on our ascent and digging at our high point revealed moderate (14 taps on a compression test) and sudden planar failures ~40cm down (presumably the Feb. 10th layer). Snow depth on the glacier itself seemed less than adequate for low-visibility travel and varied widely from 40cm to 200cm, presumably due to wind distribution. We saw many open crevasses through the snow and cloud.

 

The actual skiing on the glacier itself was decent despite being inside a ping-pong ball. However, upon reaching the moraines the quality of skiing rapidly diminished due to either very hard windslab or little-to-no-snow. We side-stepped and picked our way through the shallow spots and triggered a very large whumpf in the lee of a large, steep moraine ~2800m. Skiing was tougher down low on 3-5cm thick melt-freeze crust on south-to-west aspects; our skis suffered with lots of scratches and a core shot for me. In my opinion, this area will need quite a bit more snow in order to offer good skiing and easier travel.

 

Morning temps at the car were -26C and warmed up to -14C by 1100hrs but dropped back to -18C by 1600hrs. Cloud cover increased throughout the day as did the precipitation although only ~1cm accumulated. Winds were calm below 2800m and were light from the west at 3100m. 

Andrew Councell

Mountain Guide

 

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Peter Tucker
Executive Director
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