[MCR] Wapta Icefields, Icefields Parkway. Nov. 14-19

[Public Mountain Conditions Report]

Myself and fellow guide Grant Meekins just returned from a week of ski mountaineering on the Wapta yesterday. Here's a bit of what we saw and did while we were up there. 
The approach to Bow Hut is still quite boney but actually better than I think we'd both expected. The lake has only started to really freeze over this past week with the cold temps, but still way to thin to be skiing across. The track around the lake has good coverage, and we were able to keep the skis on the whole way to the hut. The canyon just past Bow Falls was definitely thin in places, but passable. Still lot's of open water to negotiate, but easy enough to get around if your careful. Above treeline coverage wasn't too bad, but still thin enough to make the descent a bit nerve wracking

>From Bow Hut, we did most of our skiing on the hut slopes just above the toe of the glacier. Snow coverage down near the toe was usually between 120cm & 200cm's. There's still one or two of the big crevasses on the toe yet to fill in but their getting close. We managed to ski and climb Mts. Olive, Gordon and Rhondda while we were there. Coverage on the ice field proper was somewhat dependent on whether or not we were above this past summer's firn line - above it we found more than 300cm's at best, and below it  around 200cm's

Ski quality for the first couple days was quite good until the winds picked up on the 16th. Our stability tests produced results on a variety of slab interfaces in the top 50cm's of the pack. We saw mostly easy to moderate results in tests on layers down (on average) 10cm's, 30cm's and 40cm's on eastern aspects with both resistant and sudden fractures. These were consistent with a cycle we saw overnight on the 16th. A wind and light snow event produced numerous avalanches from Sz. 1.0 to 2.5, almost all on perfectly eastern aspects with crowns in the immediate lee of ridge features between 8000ft. & 10,000ft. The east faces of St. Nicholas, Collie, Crowfoot, Ayesha and Baker all had at least one or two crowns on their flanks. We only skied one west aspect over the week, a run on the west side of Mt. Olive. Stability tests there (just shy of 10,000ft) produced easy results 10cm's down on an interface below a newly formed windslab. Ski quality was similar to what we saw elsewhere during the week.
-26*C on the coldest morning and with it saw a bit of surface faceting on our last day up there and some decent ski quality returning with it. Definitely felt like winter!
Play safe!

Mike Trehearne
ACMG Alpine & Asst. Ski Guidemike at cloudnineguides.comwww.yamnuska.com
 		 	   		  
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