[MCR] Lake O'Hara conditions July 8th, 2014

Subject: [MCR] Lake O'Hara conditions July 8th, 2014
Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2014 13:48:35 -0600
Summer is coming on fast. Despite rain till almost 11pm sunday night we had 
excellent snow conditions on Cathedral mtn standard route in the monday am till 
around 11am. In the afternoon, it was a very different story-waterfalls and 
LOTS of small to BIG rocks pouring off the west faces of Huber and Hungabee and 
this barrage kept up till well into the evening. 

Only one observed down avalanche in the past couple of days but it was a big 
ugly one. Where the couloir between Ringrose pk and Glacier pk pinches down a 
big ugly slab pulled out right down to the glacier ice. I didn’t get a clear 
view of it due to fog but my wild guess is that it was triggered by rockfall 
from Ringrose.

Cathedral, Lefroy, Glacier, Huber would be great with an early start and fast 
movement. Wow betide you if you are hanging around in the daytime heat under 
anything steep and 1/2 snowy. Victoria SE ridge is still quite snowy and would 
require some solid snow skills and fast travel to keep it safe.  Hungabee and 
Biddle would be stupid and Odaray probably needs another couple of days of 
heat. The Tarrant/Morrison buttress on Odaray is coming along but again another 
week like the one in the forecast would do wonders for it.

Big moon and a fine forecast-it would be a grand time to spend a night up high 
to catch the early morning freeze!

Larry Stanier
ACMG Mountain Guide
laristan@xxxxxxxxx


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