We are having one of those terrific springs where you can have excellent ski touring and rock climbing on the same day. Forecasts are stable for a few days so take advantage of it.
In the Rockies, excellent skiing conditions can be found along the Banff Jasper Highway in the Rockies. Very early starts are in order with a planned return well before noon. Timing will be critical if you want to enjoy good corn snow instead of some skeleton rattling and if you want to avoid high avalanche hazard. Cornices are starting to cleave and this is the time of year where, once they fail, can either trigger deep slabs or carry enough mass to run a long ways-or both. Again, timing and aspect are the key. Access to the Wapta Icefields across Bow Lake is still good in the early morning but not a very good idea later in the day. Exits down from Scott Duncan will likely be rugged and require a significant amount of hiking. A number of people have reported excellent travelling on the Columbia Icefields with near perfect conditions for ascents of Mt. Columbia. Again, timing will be important especially when exiting down the Athabasca glacier through the crevasse cruxes. Some of the bigger lines for the Rockies are getting skied with excellent conditions. Today on the north face of Mt. Stanley a party reported good skiing with 20 to 40 cm of powder well bonded to a supportive crust. The best skiing was on the steeper terrain above 45 degrees facing due north.
Most of the waterfall ice routes are sun-bleached and finished. On north aspects, in the very early part of the day, if you hate rock climbing, there may still be some worthwhile routes. Front range crags are drying out and routes on Yamnuska will come back into shape with this dry sunny spell. It is still snowy getting to the Back of the Lake but a number of the routes there are climbable. In Jasper Park, rock routes east of town are likely coming into descent shape.
In the Selkirks at Rogers Pass, excellent spring skiing can also be found. On the Illecillewaet and Asulkan side great corn skiing has been reported by guides and there is snow down to the highway. Make sure your day ends early or you will be facing high avalanche hazard and very tedious travelling. Skiing on the Hermit side is essentially finished with the the lower avalanche paths and slopes melted out. There have been no reports on the alpine rock routes on Mt. MacDonald yet but we are getting close to the time of the time of year where the rock dries off and the access and descents, while still snow covered, make these routes possible.
Reprot written by: Marc Ledwidge
ACMG/UIAGM Mountain Guide
