Hi all,
I just finished 4 days of ski touring guiding in the Rogers Pass area. We toured in Connaught creek, the Illecillewaet valley, Asulkan and the Loop Brook area over this period. We took advantage of the good weather conditions to ski glaciated and supported
alpine terrain to 40deg. There were heaps of other folks out there enjoying the current conditions and as a results there are a lot of tracks! The ski quality was good to excellent on Northerly aspects with some wind affect at ridge top however, there is now
a breakable sun crust on most southerly aspects. The snow pack is recovering from the recent storm cycle and adjusting to the new load. We noticed two main layers of concerns in the upper snowpack; a storm interface down about 40cm and the February 10th layer
down 60-80cm. Both these layer generally gave moderate to hard shear results. We measured an average height of snow of 275cm at treeline. The height of snow on the Illecillewaet Glacier at 2150m was 300+cm and 400+cm at 2300m on the protected Bonney Glacier.
We did not observe any signs of instability (whumpfing or cracking). The solar radiations from the last few days triggered several dry/wet avalanches to size 2 on steep solar aspects, the most recent slab avalanches were from Monday. Of note, all the low
elevation access trails are hard and icy making for sections of technical skinning. Also, there are many open creeks sections below treeline making for challenging crossing in some areas. This will likely deteriorate as Spring evolve.
Great mid-winter Spring skiing conditions!
Cheers,
David Lussier
acmg mountain guide
http://summitmountainguides.com/
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