[MCR] Rogers Pass and area update for MCR Jan 1st, 2010

I have been touring around Rogers Pass and Revelstoke area over the holidays and figured it was time to send out an update on how things have been developing over the last few days.This info was garnered between Dec.27-Jan.1 from trips in the following locations: Connaught Ck. (NW bowl of Cheops, Bruins Pass Ursus Minor Bowl), Cougar Ck. Slide paths (Rogers Pass), Hermit Meadows, Mt. Macpherson (Monashees mtns. above Revelstoke), Corbin Pass (west of Glacier Park Boundary).

My earlier trips during the good weather of the high pressure ridge showed surface hoar averaging 10-15mm. in size widespread throughout the treeline and below treeline elevations - sitting on a suncrust of varying thickness on steeper sloar aspects (South-Southwest). The Dec.9th interface buried @40-60cms. was not very reactive for the most part, though I did see someone trigger a size one slab in one of the short steep chutes on the far skiers right side of Balu Pass back on Dec.27th. The surface hoar in the alpine was in the 3-5mm. size range and was more spotty in coverage due to some wind affects at higher elevations.

The snow started Dec.29th and so far we have somewhere between 30-50cms of fairly low density snow over the previously mentioned surface hoar/suncrust combo - over the last few days we could manage to trigger small loose snow slides on stepper terrain in the storm snow but the snow lacked the stiffness needed to propogate the failures - things were running fairly far however once they got moving.

Today there was another 15cms. or so of new snow that fell in 1`-3cm/hr snowshowers throughout the day - even though the recent storm snow (slab) was still very soft I could easily ski trigger any steep covex slope over 35 degrees that would fail as a soft slab but not propogate very wide - the big risk today was someone triggering something on top of another skier that was below them. I also observed lots of cracking while skiing the lower angled terrain.

All that to say that things are changing every day as the load and temperatures increase, and as the characteristics of the overlying slab begin to stiffen the potential for remote triggering as well as larger skier triggered and natural avalanche events will begin to increase - pretty much time to pull in the reins after a great holiday ski season with good stability and play things pretty cautious for the next while (may be a fair while with this one!).

Wishing everyone a safe NEW YEAR!

Scott Davis
ACMG/IFMGA Mountain Guide