Headed out late today, Sat. 22, to Black Prince along with most of Calgary. There must have been 20-25 cars in the parking lot. It seems like most of the people were on some kind of AST course so it was not all that tracked up. The ski quality was pretty good with fast boot top powder and not all that much traffic in the last week. The snowpack is just barely carrying your skis at the parking lot and gets better as you go up although still feels really weak at tree line. There are lots of visible fracture lines that produced large avalanches many running full path, some not looking all that old! There has been and still is significant wind loading in the alpine and treeline, there’s still snow out there to transport and the wind is doing its thing. I’d stay pretty clear of any alpine features even if they have already gone it looks like things have loaded back in pretty good. It didn’t look like there has been a lot of traffic other places in Kananaskis I only saw a couple of cars at Tryst Lake. Play safe there has been lots of wind moving snow around, even at treeline.
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Black Prince
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2011-01-22 19:31:30
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2011-01-22 21:22:44Not familiar with Black Prince, do you have some location info? Ice fields parkway, Louise area maybe?
Any pictures from the day?
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2011-01-23 13:01:55
Sorry no photos of the day.
Black Prince is in Kananaskis off of the Smith Dorian. It’s a good place to get in a few quick laps in relatively safe terrain, as long as you don’t venture out into the bigger terrain on either side of the “Tree Triangle”. Here is a link to a SummitPost enter for it with some photos of the terrain
http://www.summitpost.org/blac.....ski/178350
Also Kananaskis Park has a FaceBook site with a bunch of photos of the popular ski terrain in the park. Here’s a link to the Black Prince photo
http://www.facebook.com/photo......5148093422
hopefully the links will work
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2011-01-25 13:06:20Hey JoeBuzz, we would like to place this route in our Kananaskis section if you are ok with that - but just need a few more details:
ACCESS: How do you get to it via driving?
MAP NUMBER: what topo map # do you need for the route?
TIME: How long does it take to get to the start of the route?(ie the climb portion - be generous)
ELEVATION GAIN: how much climbing to the top of the route is there in feet and meters?
ATES RATING: These need to be CAA guide rated and submitted to the CAC for acceptance.
Alternatively you can send the info in via our form.
Thanks in advance for your help.
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2011-02-03 11:55:40
Went out for quick late day lap at Black Prince Wed. (Feb. 2). There has been lots of traffic there since the snow fall on Sunday. The main area is getting pretty tracked up, not surprising, but the skiing was great where you can find untracked snow. South facing slopes are starting to get a bit sun affected which I would bet this is pretty wide spread throughout Kananaskis. The storm snow from the weekend has settled to anywhere from 20 to 30cm, depending on aspect, and on south aspects was bounding well to the old surface. On the shady side, NE, it’s not bonded as well giving an easy compression test but has not formed into any kind of a slab, and was great skiing. The whole snow pack is feeling a lot more settled than even a week ago with a good supportive mid pack, for the Rockies you can still push you ski pole to the ground. I didn’t see any evidence of avalanche activity in the last 24hrs but would keep a close eye on the temperature if it warms up as forecasted things will change pretty fast.
