We started the trip with 30-40 cm of recent storm snow atop strong melt freeze crusts. Luckily at the beginning of the trip we had wind in the right places (scouring the new snow out of the top of Bugaboo-Snowpatch col) and calm in the right places (no wind effect on Bill's Pass the same day - face shots), and just enough visibility. By day 3, April 15, we were dealing with melt-freeze conditions on solar aspects and a dry, fairly well-settled snowpack on north aspects, allowing us to get over Climax Col and Hume Pass. Easy travel up the souths and boot-top powder on the norths.
Another system blew in by day 5 (April 17), we managed to get over Malachite Col but due to misty weather and flat light I failed to see a crevasse bridge and collapsed a bridge about 4 meters wide, 15 meters long and 1.2 meters thick on the Carbonate Icefield as we were gaining the ridge off International Mountain. The rope was on so all ended well. The lesson learned though was that a thin Purcell snowpack this year is causing some crevasses to not be bridged as well as might be expected this time of year.
By day 7 (April 19) things were warming a lot and wet snow and light rain began. Both the Beaver Glacier and Grand Glacier exits did not look appealing at all: steep, thin looking snowpack and lots of crevasses. Either things have changed in the last several years or the snowpack is thinner than normal, both these glaciers were places I would normally try to avoid in the condition I saw them.
We opted for the lower elevation Beaver Overlook exit. On April 20 there was a significant wet avalanche cycle on all aspects up to 2700 m. We waited it out for a day until the clear night on April 20/21 and raced up the narrow snow-filled gullies and thin snowpack through the steep moraines on a "supportive enough" radiation crust, getting onto the Deville Icefield by 8 am after a 5 am start by headlamp.
The last day on April 23 started out overcast with wind gusts to approximately 100 kph (two of us were blown over) and ended with an intense white-out down the Illecillewaet glacier. I was in those moraines 4 times this winter and wasn't quite sure where I was yesterday until we were in the forest.
By the end of the day several cm of snow had fallen on a warm crust. It was bonding well with little slab formation at the time and would have been good skiing if we could have seen it. As it was I threw my prussik ahead of me about 1000 times on the descent as it was the only reference we had to keep us on our feet!
Good times were had by all!
Mark Klassen
Mountain Guide
www.alpinism.com