Went ski touring to Rae Glacier yesterday Nov 14.
Trail to Elbow Lake and on to the morraine of Rae Glacier is well packed by snow shoers with only the odd rock or root sticking out. In the morraines, the snow coverage is more skimpy due to heavy wind effect and we ended up carrying the skis once or twice for shorter sections.
Snow in the Rae Glacier Bowl was wind-affected, however we found good quality skiing on 20 - 40 cm of soft slab. Temps around -15C with moderate to strong northerly winds caused some wind loading in the upper bowl while we were there. Test pit at 2700 meters showed HS of 160 cm (total depth of snow). Soft surface slab of 25 cm over graupel on top of a thin temperature crust. The temperature crust is much more pronounced in lower elevations. The base and mid-pack appeared surprisingly well consolidated with no significant shears in a compression test. A concern would be the increasing depth of the windslab as you climb higher in the bowl and towards the saddle. We turned around just before reaching the first band of rock on the left side.
We also had a look at some ice climbs but only from the road. Amadeus is looking relatively good higher up but doesn't reach the bottom (which I believe is pretty standard), Sinatra doesn't appear to be in, Kidd Falls is looking pretty good and as far as I could see, Saddam's Insane is pretty phat at least in the upper part that is visible from the road.
Happy trails!
Jorg Wilz
Mountain Guide (IFMGA / UIAGM)