[MCR] Mt Field
Public Mountain Conditions Report
mcr at informalex.org
Thu Apr 16 21:16:01 EDT 2009
Good overnight refreeze in spite of only -3C at the Yoho Valley parking lot
this morning at 7AM. Good travel throughout the trip and we opted to head
towards a saddle on the north ridge of the main summit as the steep, last
pitch to the main summit was threatened by a good size cornice. We stopped
about 20 vertical meters short of our destination, as we encountered soft
wind slabs sitting on a thin melt freeze crust, which wasn't carrying
anymore above 2400 meters. A couple of smaller whumpfs and a midpack that
felt pretty unconsolidated on the ski-pole test made us turn around.
Some clouds in the pm kept the alpine reasonably cool and we found good
skiing on up to 20cm of recent snow, which stayed dry to 2200m on easterly
aspects and down to about 2000m on straight northern aspects. Further down
in the avalanche pass the skiing was still pleasant with up to 5cms of moist
snow on the recent melt-freeze crust.
The snow carried today on the way out along the road and in the old tracks
around 2.30 pm, but some deep, recent "sinkholes" suggested that someone had
much worse conditions coming out on a previous day.
Cheers,
Jorg Wilz
Mountain Guide (ACMG / IFMGA)
OnTop ltd.
www.ontopmountaineering.com <http://www.ontopmountaineering.com/>
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