Waddington to the Dias Glacier area. Other than the ski quality the
area around the regular base-camp on the Dias is in good shape.
From the limited probing that I did on the Franklin, Finality and
Angel glacier there is well over 3m in the area. Having said this
though, there is widespread evidence of an extreme wind event in the
past few weeks which has stripped much snow off ridge tops and made
snow conditions on north faces, bullet proof!
We managed to be in the area right when most snow surfaces were going
though its first transition into a spring snow cycle. This meant that
we used ski crampons on almost all of our travel however the snow
never really turned into a skiable form of corn snow due to the powder
like conditions underneath. On most days this meant we were rewarded
with a beautiful breakable crust or schmoo for skiing.
We did mange to bag the false summit of the NW peak of Waddington in
our short stay. In my 15 years of skiing in the area I have never seen
the Angle glacier in such difficult conditions. The Seracs have become
very active and personally are almost a bit much for a ski route. The
attached photo is from our flight into the area on the evening of the
14th, however when we climbed up there two days later there had been a
serac fall from high on the glacier in the center. This large icefall
did not cause any real avalanche, but it did leave a 2-3m deep trench
down the entire glacier and left debris field 30-40m wide.
Also of note the NW summit of Waddington was also in difficult
conditions with mostly blue ice and two near vertical steps just below
the summit. Defiantly not skiable as it usually is at this time of the
year. Ski and boot crampons were a must for our whole route up from
the Dias as would be a few more ice screws and a real ice axe and
crampons for the NW summit.
With a forecast of warming temps and poor weather we headed out a few
days earlier than planed. I'd bet with the warm temps there would be
bit of an avalanche cycle going right now until the temps cooled off
again.
Craig McGee, Mountain guide.
Whistler BC
craigskibum@yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
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