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I guided a ski tour up Divide Creek to the Mt Niblock/Mt Whyte Col today, March 29th. We parked on a plowed pull-out/road at a bridge over the train tracks 1/2 a kilometre east of the Alberta/BC border. You can carry your skis down under the bridge and start skiing there. Divide Creek is 1/2 kilometre away as opposed to 3 if you park at the Lake O'Hara parking lot.
The tour has been seeing some traffic and there was a good up track to treeline where it got blown in. Boot top ski penetration to the col which we gained on the Mt Whyte end. The skiing was a little heavier than my last week on the Wapta, but still good. Good enough that we opted for a second lap on the glacier and decided to ski from the prominent bench on the glacier's west side. While track setting in that direction my pole probing indicated about 80 cms of firm bonded snow and then a soft structureless layer of about 20 cm to a hard surface. Surprised I dug down with my hands and found the soft 20 cm layer to be basal facets sitting on glacier ice. This was at about 9000 feet and on the glacial bulge just shy of the aforementioned 'bench'. I suspect there must have been significant wind scouring here as 1 meter of snow seems shallow to me. We stopped, backtracked, and skied the slope where it was less steep and holding more snow.
Happy trails,
Barry Blanchard
Mountain Guide
www.barryblanchard.ca
www.yamnuska.com