Bomber Traverse

Bomber in a day. Took advantage of the last sunny day for a minute to spin a lap on the Bomber. Departed the Mint Lot around noon and made it to the hut around 2:30. Travel in the Mint Valley is easy, but sparkly snow and white birds that will scare you. The willows are thick due to not much snow this season.

The climb to Backdoor Gap hadn't been traveled in a day or two. While there was evidence of a previous bootpack and skin track, these were both obscured by some recent windblown snow. I transitioned a couple of times and tried to follow the route, but re-establishing both was slippery and time-consuming. 

The ski down Penny Royal was great. Areas of smooth wind crust were interspersed with an orange-peel-like surface that skied great. The bottom of the glacier and the terrain leading to the Bomber Hut were significantly thinner than last year. I didn't hit any rocks, but once it starts warming up, it won't last long. 

The ski down to Bertholf Creek was slow, mostly because the snow was cold, but I think I had something sticky on my ski. There were some ski and snowmachine tracks to follow. 

The climb up to Snowbird Hut and Glacier Pass was easy, as a party had established a skin track recently, and there had been a decent number of skiers riding lines around the glacier. The hut was in good shape, but the last couple of entries in the logbook mentioned having trouble with the drip stove regulator. 

The ski down from Glacier Pass was thinner than I've seen in a while. Some good turns were interspersed between rocks and other tracks. Below the Snowbird Mine bench, you could feel a thin solar crust on the most southwesterly aspects. 

Good day overall, perfectly ran out of water on Glacier Pass and was back to the car in 7hrs. My feet and hips were hurting by the end of the Mint Valley but everything went numb by the time I made it to the top of Backdoor Gap!

I didn't dig a single pit, so I can only tell you what the snowpack felt like. Surfaces were mostly a mix of soft, protected facets and breakable windboard. On the climb to Backdoor Gap, there were some areas of buried wind slab under soft facets that both sounded hollow and made for slippery skinning. I observed a couple of avalanches that looked to be at least a few days old. These were some small, loose dry sluffs on a west aspect on the Penny Royal Glacier, and a thin wind slab on a more northerly aspect right out the back of the Snowbird Hut.