dry out the eastern slopes of the Rockies in Jasper Park. The snowline has
begun to retreat up the hills with south facing slopes now looking more like
they were prior to the snows that started just after the May long weekend.
In general you should think of the situation as being somewhat akin to what
you would expect in the first week of May rather than the last week in May.
Rock climbing areas that I can confirm are dry include Morro Peak, slabs and
Bluffs, Hidden Valley, Juno Wall, Rock Gardens and Shredder Reef. Anything
north facing is still in the snow zone unless it is right in the valley
bottom. Snowline along the main ranges is still below treeline on anything
except direct sun-facing slopes. Most scrambles are still in poor shape and
are best avoided for a while yet.
At the Parkers Ridge crevasse rescue practice spot on Wednesday it snowed up
to 10 additional centimeters with a poor overnight freeze making for
post-holing through the trees until you were on a thicker snowpack. This new
snow sat on top of moist snow that had not set up overnight. Trail breaking
was up to waist deep in the trees but boot top on the more consolidated open
slopes. The skiing didn't look all that great really. Noticed a few recent
slabs on the way to Jasper and back from size 1 to 2.5.
Today on the toe of the Athabasca Glacier we probed anything from 25 cm to
250 cm. This is a lot more snow that I would usually see here at this time
of year. Not much ice showing anywhere on the toe. Peaks like Athabasca, A2
and Andromeda have not been seeing ascents other than the Andromeda ski
ascent via the back side that Barry reported on earlier. Still looks like a
wintery wind loaded place on anything big. I would be careful about
venturing onto any big wind loaded features as we saw a bunch of recent
slabs above treeline with a lot of new point releases noted this afternoon
with the daytime heating.
Cyril Shokoples MG
Jeremy Mackenzie MG
Rescue Dynamics
5109 - 17A Avenue NW
Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA T6L 1K5
http://www.rescuedynamics.ca
http://www.rescuedynamics.com
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