[MCR] Maligne Lake area revisited

[Public Mountain Conditions Report]

Up to the Bald Hills today with an AST group looking at the snowpack 
in the Eastern Slopes of the Rockies.

-23 in the parking lot, -20 at the summer trail turnoff and though we 
were expecting (hoping for!)  some kind of an inversion in the 
sunshine at treeline, the thermometer still read -23.

Still shallow below treeline and though people have been "making 
turns" you would be best to stick to the road below 1950metres.

A test profile at treeline had a 52cm snowpack. The top 10CM was 
newer snow but quite faceted. The midpack was larger facets which sat 
on top of the rain crust which is about 10cm off the ground.

The upper layers were still very unconsolidated and couldn't get any 
shears or compressions on top of the rain crust.
We did not find the surface hoar layer as our tests gave no clean shears.

A Rutchblock test was done at 2250 metres, NE aspect, ~50-60cm 
snowpack. the results were a score of 5 below the rain crust.

No natural activity observed.

In general the cold temps have really progressed the faceting process 
in most of the snowpack.
We would suspect that there are areas in the alpine where wind affect 
will have stiffened up the surface layers and it could be more reactive,
..however not that much wind affect was observed in this drainage.

With these weak layers sitting on top of a good sliding 
crust......next big storm should be interesting.

Peter Amann
Mountain Guide



Peter Amann

pamann at incentre.net