[MCR] Cirque Peak, Banff Park, May 7

Ken Bibby and I skied up Cirque Peak with a group from Thompson Rivers University Adventure Studies. We ascended the peak via Helen Creek and the south ridge. Very good travel conditions with a couple of cm's of new snow on a supportive crust. Ski crampons were utilized for much of the ascent, and we boot hiked the final 100 metres. We didn't bring boot crampons, and didn't need them.

We did a 60 m lower off the two bolt anchor, from the notch between the summits and down the north facing couloir, and skied out Jimmy Simpson creek to the highway.

Great ski conditions with well settled snow and a bit of soft powder on the high north facing slopes, and supportive corn skiing on the solar aspects in the afternoon. Quite cool temps for May ( -7 C at 07:00 at 2300m) and no dramatic warming, with cloud in the morning and broken sky cover the afternoon.

Jordy Shepherd
Mountain Guide
_______________________________________________
These observations and opinions are those of the person who submitted them. The ACMG and its members take no responsibility for errors, omissions, or lapses in continuity. Conditions differ greatly over time and space due to the variable nature of mountain weather and terrain. Application of this information provides no guarantee of increased safety. Do not use the Mountain Conditions Report as the sole factor in planning trips or making decisions in the field.
Please check out http://acmg.ca/mcr for more information.

[MCR] Rockies, attempt on The Undertow

My buddy, Jonny Blitz, and I made an attempt on The Undertow on
Tangle Ridge, May 4-6. Having packed for a different objective, we
hustled to repack when we saw the weather forecast step down on
Wednesday morning. Got our bivy permit from Grant at the Icefields
Centre, which is fully up and running, and walked away from the truck
at noon. Everything went well until the top of Shades Of Beauty,
which is in fine shape (we walked around the first 2 pitches and
climbed the last). From the top of Shades things got more challenging
-read post holing and wallowing and trying to read by Braille the
faint track of the seekers-who-went-before, seekers who turned around
after several hundred meters and I wished that they hadn't. We turned
the rockband overhead via scrambling up a break/avalanche path. The
path had sloughed/slid in the past and offered firm footing so we
kicked steps up it to tree line and then turned left to the route and
the trail-breaking really got sick. It was like going ski touring
without skis (if I was to go back I would take skis). Three hours of
hard to-the-crotch work got us to the flats and forest below the
climb (the flats were the worst). We would have turned back had the
climb not looked so good. We saw no avalanches on Wednesday.

5 am we set out and the snow was carrying no better. We were reduced
to the level of dumb beasts crawling for 30 meter stretches on hands
and knees. Thankfully the slopes below the climb carried properly
with boot top steps once we got off of the accursed 'flats'. Took us
3 hours to get to the ice.

The climb is hard and complicated with superstructures of blobs and
curtains that sit over matrixes of icicles none of them very large.
There are no big blue pillars, it climbs well with good picks but is
a challenge to protect. 4 of our anchors involved pitons and nuts (we
took a small selection and no cams). 12 hours of engagement saw us
2/3rds of the way up the route at the bottom of a grade 6 or 6+
pitch. We bailed back to the tent (got back to it at 10 pm).

The route is seeing a couple hours of sun in the morning. Wet stains
formed on its edges by 4 pm on Thursday and small chunks of ice began
falling, some small snow features fell from the wall. A point 5
surface slough had ran over our approach tracks in the afternoon.

Neither of the mixed lines are there this year.

Friday we were walking by 8am and back to the truck at 11:30 am. Our
track carried well on the way out. A half dozen surface sloughs had
run on Thursday, one a size 2 that ran close to Beauty Creek.

Happy trails,

Barry Blanchard
Mountain Guide
www.barryblanchard.ca
www.yamnuska.com

[MCR] Rockies, Icefall Lodge, Mt Forbes

Skied the last week at Icefall Lodge. The week started with spring conditions, good freezes overnight, supportive crusts and dry powder on north aspects. Since Tuesday May 3 15 cm of snow has fallen at 2500m. This is settling quickly at lower elevations. This morning at 1900m we had a temperature of -.5 and a 5 cm thick crust which supported most of the morning. North aspect now have a temperature crust up to 2200m with dry snow above. There was some cracking around our skis on wind loaded areas near ridge line but we weren't able to ski cut any avalanches.
On May 2 we climbed Mt Forbes and skied from the shoulder 150m below the summit. A party the day before had skied from the summit. There are large patches of bare ice on the east side of the face but the centre is pretty well covered, picture below. The North Glacier of Forbes also has large patches of blue ice on the side, but had over 320 cm of snow in several places we probed. The Lyell and Mons Glaciers appeared to have better coverage and were over 320cm everywhere we probed. The valleys in Glacier Lake and Alexandra still looked to be well covered with snow.

[MCR] Observation Sub-Peak, Banff Park April 3

Skied up the highway side of Observation Sub-Peak today with fellow ski guide Ken Bibby and a group of university students.
Broken clouds and convective snow flurries kept the temperature around -2. There was a moderate northwest wind transporting snow across the summit ridge.
We skied down via the south facing bowl off the summit, into the drainage known locally as Jimmy Simpson Creek.
Ken skied over to assess the open south east facing slope below the summit, at about 2850m. He found 40 cm of soft slab on a buried sun crust. As he was skiing back towards the group and reporting that the stability was suspect, a 20 - 60 cm deep fracture released 15 metres behind him. It was 75 m wide and ran 250+ m on the buried sun crust.
We were able to safely descend the south facing slope adjacent to the avalanche on a stiff surface of sun crust (so no slab avalanche danger).

Jordy Shepherd
Mountain Guide

Ken Bibby
Ski Guide

_______________________________________________
These observations and opinions are those of the person who submitted them. The ACMG and its members take no responsibility for errors, omissions, or lapses in continuity. Conditions differ greatly over time and space due to the variable nature of mountain weather and terrain. Application of this information provides no guarantee of increased safety. Do not use the Mountain Conditions Report as the sole factor in planning trips or making decisions in the field.
Please check out http://acmg.ca/mcr for more information.

[MCR] Rockies: Coolior

Today we skied the Coolior. Our primary concern was the set of 10
minute old grizzly tracks we found as we silently shussed through the
forest on the way back to the road.

Mark Klassen
Mountain Guide

Erica Roles
Asst Ski/Asst Alpine Guide

[MCR] Coast Range - Garibaldi Neve - April 25th to May 1st

Chris Lawrence and I returned today (Sunday) from guiding a ski mountaineering course for 7 days on the Garibaldi Neve. We started from Rubble Creek April 25^th and ended at Diamond Head May 1st.

 

Access

The road is not plowed to the summer parking lot at Rubble Creek. We parked at the winter plowing line marked on the Garibaldi Park map. We were able to skin up to the summer parking lot, then boot packed up patchy snow to around 800m elevation where we put on our skis. Garibaldi Lake was still very frozen, with no indication of any problems crossing it soon. At Rubble Creek, two of our 3 cars were found with smashed windows and stolen gear on return (including my 1L tub of vegemite!).  Skiing out to the Diamond Head parking lot was well covered.

 

New Snow

New storm snow was observed from 20-35cm depending on elevation and aspect.

 

Avalanches

No significant avalanches were observed. Our main concern was wind slabs near ridge top as we encountered strong winds on Wednesday April 27^th from the South, then switching to West overnight. These were observed up to 70cm deep. The sun did not have much effect on the snowpack during the week.

 

Glaciers

Glaciers were well generally well covered, with 300cm probed at the toe of the Sphinx Glacier. The bergshrund on Mt Garibaldi's NE Face was very large. We opted to cross it on the climbers left due to concerns with wind slabs on the right. While skiing down over the bergshrund, I ski cut a small size 1 wind slab that was enough to break the bridge and further open up the bergshrund.

 

Snow conditions

Snow was still wintery above 2200m on northerly aspects on April 29^th. By May 1^st we found a supportable crust below the Elfin Shelter that was beginning to soften, so I would expect corn skiing can now be found.

Alex Geary (ACMG Assistant Ski Guide, Assistant Rock Guide)
Chris Lawrence (ACMG Mountain Guide)

[MCR] Ventigo Lake to Fairy Meadows Ski Traverse, Northern Selkirks, April 23-30, 2011

Just returned from guiding a great ski traverse with Tom Wolfe starting just above Ventigo Lake and skiing across to Fairy Meadows over the course of a week.  We were able to climb and ski Iconoclast, Argentine Mountain, Centurion Ridge and Sentinel Peak along the way and had generally good to excellent travel and ski conditions throughout the week!  Great treeline camping and North facing ski runs throughout.

 

Spring is finally arriving in the alpine with firm crusts on solar aspects in the morning and moist snow on all but high North aspects in the afternoon.  We used ski crampons quite a bit during our last three days which was very useful on the steeper slopes.  Ski conditions on N aspects remained good until yesterday but were beginning to show signs of the warmer temperatures by this morning.  Below 1800m the snow is starting to have an isothermal feel to it on the surface, but still provided good travel especially in the morning. 

 

Glacier coverage was excellent with more than 3m of snow in all but the most wind blown areas of ice.  The bergschrunds on Iconoclast and Argentine still remain a concern as do some areas in Fairy Meadows such as Pioneer Pass.  I think most of these have seen avalanches on the basal facets at some point during the winter and are thinly bridged.

 

We did not see any new avalanches other than a few solar triggered loose slides on steep south aspects in the afternoon during our week.  We did still have some minor concerns for small wind slabs on steep N aspects from the Thursday storm but this seems to be improving daily.  No whumphing and no significant results in the snow pack tests we did during the week.  Seems like a pretty good time to have a look at the bigger lines in the area. 

An excellent traverse with great company and a fun way to explore the Northern Selkirks!

 

Cheers, Conrad Janzen
ACMG/IFMGA Mountain Guide
Trip photos at www.banffmountainguides.com