Spent the last four days skiing with Felix Camire and an ACC group in Roger's Pass. We had a good look around skiing in Balu Pass, Bruins Pass, the Dome Glacier, the Little Sifton traverse and the Ursus Minor Basin. With the exception of the lower elevation alders the ski quality was good to excellent everywhere!
As of today we found some wind affect at higher elevations and a bit of surface hoar forming below treeline but mostly the surface snow is becoming very faceted with the cold temperatures. The entire snow pack is still fairly low density but carried well. Snow depths averaged 140cm at treeline with about 190cm on the Dome Glacier.
Our avalanche concerns were limited to wind slabs in steep loaded areas, especially near ridge crests. Other than that we did not find any consistent weaknesses in the snow pack except for lingering hard to very hard test results on the Nov rain crust near the ground on N aspects above treeline.
A couple very small skier triggered wind slabs in the Dome Glacier area yesterday and a couple natural size 1-1.5 wind slabs on the Asulkan Glacier were noted. One larger size 2 avalanche was also seen on a N aspect opposite the 'Lookout Notch' which we suspect also had to do with wind loading.
A nice start to the Christmas season!
ACMG/IFMGA Mountain Guide
www.banffmountainguides.com