[MCR] Wapta Icefields, July 26th - 30th.

[Public Mountain Conditions Report]

Hey all,
 
Spent 6 days on an Intro to Mountaineering course from the Bow Hut last week. Really unsettled weather this week, with some form of precip. almost everyday. Most mornings we were waking up to snow above 9500ft. but raining hard below, not much in the way of good freezes while we were there. Warmest daytime temp. all week was +7C. My gore-tex definitely got a workout this week! 
 
Olive and St. Nick still have great travel. On St. Nick I was able to kick supportive bucket steps pretty much all the way from the col to the summit. The snow on Olive was more of the same, and easy walking on the upper ridge. Still the usual big cornices hanging out up there as well. We descended from there to spend the night down at the Balfour Hut, and the next day climbed Gordon from the south side via a small col about 300m south of the Vulture Col (marked as a route in red on Murray Toft's map). Something I'd never done before, but seemed like a nice alternative to it's typical ascent route. Good supportive travel from Balfour Hut to just below the summit of Gordon, but descending from the summit back down to about 9600ft. we ran into deep postholing with boot penetrations consistently up to 50cm's. 
 
Coverage on the upper icefields is still amazing, we didn't see any sags or open holes with the exception of a few really big guys while descending Gordon. It's pretty wild not to see a firn line creeping up onto the icefields yet. The toe's however of the Bow, Vulture, and Balfour glaciers are all showing more and more ice by the day, which did give us some options for skills days. Seemed like our eyes would open a little wider as we transitioned and traveled from the deeper snows above onto the toe features. 
 
No avalanche activity all week except for the occasional release of loose snow and debris from steep solar terrain. Lot's of rockfall though, most noticeable on the south flanks of Gordon. I'm sure having been generated by all the moisture added to the terrain over the past week.
 
That's it for now, off to Squamish for 5 days of rock climbing... hope I can remember how to tie up my rock shoes :)
 
Have fun out there!
 
 
Mike Trehearne
ARG/AAG/ASG
m_trehearne at hotmail.com
www.yamnuska.com
  		 	   		  
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