[MCR] Rogers Pass, Dec 16-19, 2010

[Public Mountain Conditions Report]

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!
Cheers, Conrad Janzen
ACMG/IFMGA Mountain Guide
www.banffmountainguides.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/mcr/attachments/20101219/dff67634/attachment.htm>