5040 peak - 3 days trip

With John’s mission to volunteer in the hut and replace some hardware, stove and other things, we started this trip up to 5040 Peak - Hišimy̓awiƛ hut We drove 4wd as far as we could on the logging road. 50cm of icy snow made the road hard to ski down. Around the 8km mark, there was the first steep section, with big ruts. It’d be worth stopping, and having a look before attempting. We parked approx 1.2km away (a bit before the last steep section) from the trailhead. The trail in the forest was surrounded by 50cm snow, so the walking terrain presents deep snow and very compressed icy parts. Some people snowshoed all the way up with no problems. Others needed to ski boot walk the first half of the trail, putting skins on where the trail opens into the alpine (half way more or less); from there to the lake, it was good, but hard to skin up the icy steep parts. We took the skis off to cross the stream near the lake, very close to the mouth, just above a small waterfall. Along the lake There was a final steeper section past the lake that we did in the dark. It got icy and slippery at the last steep push to the hut, the snowshoeing contingent took some of the skiers' bags to help them through. We had two amazing days of snowshoeing and skiing (plus the last day, skiing down from the hut to where the static ropes are), and transitioning to ski boots again. Snowshoers used snowshoes all the way through. About the snow conditions around and above the hut: The whole SE/S/SW faces present a layer of 8 cm to 25cm of very dense ice, probably from the latest arctic cold and sunny days. Some parts of the layer are hard surface hoar, and the core of it is now solid ice. All these faces present patches where the ice layer is at the surface, and others covered up with wind slabs (up to 35cm in lee slopes). We observed some old avalanche debris in some gullies and bowls. We skied and snowshoed above the hut, the gullies W and SW faces, and the bowls (best quality snow) above that. We also skied the bowls that face W and NW above the lake, where we found excellent snow. Gullies and bowls were better in the centers where we found the 15cm snow on top of the ice. Ski conditions were good thanks to the wind slabs, the small snowpack on top of the icy layer, and the sunny days melting a bit the crust. We tried to achieve 5040 peak, and traversing to the col was sketchy with ice at the surface above some icy gullies. The last part of the col was very icy and we needed to boot pack to the plateau. We decided to not try the summit nor do runs on faces E, NE because also they presented big surfaces of the icy layer. The snowpack then, is better described as: from 0-25 cm of wind blown snow on lee slopes on top of a solid ice layer of maximum density of 5-25cm. Below the icy layer we measured 120-160cm of soft snow. This will be very concerning for the next week: Any new snowpack on top, that is forecasted coming tomorrow Wednesday 17, Thursday 18 and Friday 19, it’s a problem in the short term. This snowpack is going to sit on top of a surface hoar that is a very dense icy layer. With the next rise of temperature on Friday and Saturday, there is forecasted rain, making that snowpack on top, a heavy snowpack sitting on top of a very icy dense layer!!! Be extremely careful above the hut, and in the last part of the walk below the lake on the steep faces.