Mt. Athabasca area

<p>Spent a few days skiing short objectives in the Icefields area. Excellent skiing on northerly alpine aspects right now, with up to 30 cm of powder above 2400 m! Below this, ski and boot crampons are helpful managing the semi-supportive melt-freeze crust. Glacier coverage below 2400 m was as little as 30 cm, and necessitated careful probing. Solar slopes are softening quickly when the sun pops out. Soft wind slabs have formed in the immediate lees of ridge tops, and on exposed cross-loaded features. We observed a size 2 cornice collapse into the Hilda glacier, entraining loose snow. A skier accidental size 1.5 wind slab with no involvement on Parker’s upper yesterday was reported to have small propagation and a long runout.</p>