Our group spent a couple nights at the Neil Colgan hut in the drizzle and fog on Aug 5-7 and listened to non stop rockfall from all the surrounding peaks. Fay's west ridge slopes were black ice with an enlarging Schrund and the Roth Kallen was completely black. The Central Ice Bulge still looked good. Little had heaps of rockfall on its face as well. We did not have any over night freezes.
The upper Victoria glacier (Aug 8) was also more bare then we had seen it before. The typical route of travel to the col led us to an impassable crevasse. We rerouted and went straight up from the rock buttress that you cross at the start of the glacier. From there we traveled west under the schrund and down to get back to the flats that are approx 500m of travel away from the shrund crossing before the col. The obvious hazard here is rock fall as you are under Collier for the duration. The col right now is entirely rock. Once again, there was no overnight freeze.
Looking across the way, Aberdeen looked to be ice most of the way up.
In the Icefields, (Aug 9) we went up the Boundary Ice tongue towards A2, which is in good shape with lots of white ice still. Glacier travel towards A2 looks like it could be quite complicated with bare ice and snow plugs. We descended the icefall to skiers left which was tricky route finding and required some downclimbing on dirty ice, but still doable. This morning we did have a freeze which made both the ascent and descent feel much safer from rockfall.
Overall, it seems like what are often straight forward glacier routes, have now become route finding challenges and may be potentially impossible or very time consuming. Overnight freezes also are important for keeping the rockfall hazard down on these now very icy faces.
Sarah Hueniken
ACMG Alpine Guide
Kirsten Knechtel
ACMG Mountain Guide
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