Slipstream

Climbed Slipstream on April 28th. We started from our camp below the route at 0600, topping out around 1330 and returning to camp around 1900 before packing up and heading to the road. Below about 2400m there’s a hard melt freeze crust, supportive to ski travel but with 5-15cm foot pen. The snow on route was wind and spindrift hardened, with intermittent spindrift (to size 1) down the route starting around 0700. The sun hit the top of the route by 0730-0800, and the snow in the upper bowl was quite moist and was balling underfoot when we got there around 1230. Up top on the Icefields it’s pretty windswept, with 0-15cm foot penetration in sastrugi. We rappelled the icefall between Snow Dome and Little Snow Dome; the north-aspect glacier below had boot top dry powder from 3000m down to 2400m around 1700. Plenty of buried serac debris in there though!

Overnight low of around -15°C (measured at 0515). Few to scattered clouds through the day with several (<1 hour) pulses of S-1 snow. Wind was generally from the northwest through the day.