This is an MCR Summary put together by the students of the Assistant Ski Guide Training in Rogers Pass from Jan. 24th - 30th, 2010.
Little Sifton Traverse - Skied up via Teddy Bear Trees and across to upper Grizzly shoulder at approx 1800m. 250cm (HS) Height of Snow in the alpine below Little Sifton. Dug a pit just below the summit down 150cm's. Found no evidence of the burried Surface Hoar layers. (HST) 15cm's of Storm Snow overlaid a well settled midpack with no other significant weaknesses in the snowpack. Cornice formed on the NW side of the Little Sifton Col seemed a bit bigger on approach than it actually was, only overhanging the slope by a meter or so, with easy access to the slope below coming in on climbers right. Moraine down to Puff Daddy Left, had good ski quality on more shaded aspects, but found some sun crust formation on Southerly solar aspects. Ski quality at Treeline and below is not great, this exit is getting a lot of traffic/abuse, and the old ski tracks are starting to harden up.
Tupper Traverse - We chose to skin up climbers left of the main drainage, left of the normal ascent to the Hermit alpine. From the ridge down onto the Tupper Glacier we found 300cm (HS) Height of snow at 2525m. Still some visible sags in the crevasses at the base of the steep north face of Tupper above. Good ski quality down through the Cascade Creek slide path, with the exception of a small temperature crust forming on the solar/skiers left side of the path. We were able to skier trigger small slabs about 20cm deep on the gully walls below 1300m near the highway on what appeared to be a buried rain crust.
Young’s Peak - Lots of downflow winds produced a variable depth hard slab above the toe of the Illecillewaet Glacier. We found variable snow-depth (50cm-300+cm) on the glacier with many visible sagging snow bridges over crevasses . On the ridge itself, cornice hazard formed on the East side of the ridge is a real concern and both our groups gave this thing a lot of space. From the top of Young’s Peak, the first pitch of the seven steps has a semi filled in crown on skiers right, and bare glacial ice below on the bed surface from two slides that pulled out earlier this season. Variable skiing down to the hut.
Lilly - Dome Col - Asulkan - Lot's of (SH) surface hoar up to 20mm observed on surface near valley bottom. There is over 200cm of snow in most places in this valley and lots of avalanche activity from the cycle two weeks ago. Still lots of blue ice showing through on the glaciers but still had consistent good coverage. Easy boot pack up to the Dome Col. Visible sags on big convexity of the main Dome Glacier run.
Bruins Pass - 8812 - Skinned up Bruins ridge, found shallow and faceted snow on the SW side of ridge. Skied down north glacier on back side of Bruins and skinned up to 8812 col. Glacier had 300 cm of well settled snow and crevasses covered. Jan 25 surface hoar was down 5cm, well preserved. Surface hoar was found on the surface all the way up to near the top of 8812 and 5mm in size. We turned around 30m from the summit when we found very easy shears down 20cm on the Jan 25th surface hoar with soft slab above. Skied out on easy side of Bruins ridge found sluffs running fast and far on Jan 25th surface hoar.
Perley Rock - heavily tracked. lots of old avalanche debris falline below Perley. visible glide crack on breakover mid slope.
General Observations - Our observations as the week went on definitely built confidence in the snowpack through all elevation ranges. The Dec. 29th (SH) layer still seems to be found in the 1800m - 2100m elevation range at (TL) treeline down ~ 100cm in non-wind affected areas. This was most prevalent on North and North-East aspects but we did find exceptions to that throughout the week through all elevations. Most pit results on this layer were in the hard range but when we saw failure, easy shears were almost always sudden and planar. We tried to stay clear of any features that held a shallow snowpacks and would have potential for a skiers load to trigger a release on this layer. There was still good skiing to be found in Alpine areas protected from the wind as well as the trees on shady aspects. The hard part is finding areas that haven’t been too heavily skied yet.
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Marc Piché
ACMG Mountain Guide