Bow Hut - Jan 10-11, 2026. Broke trail from the parking lot all the way to the hut yesterday. Extreme winds, lots of blowing snow all over. Some alpine slopes are looking very wind stripped.
Coverage was excellent for this time of year. The canyon was pretty straightforward considering. We did not find any reactive wind slabs despite finding a lot of wind affected snow all over. No natural avalanches seen. We avoided the steep slope to re-enter the canyon on return, and instead took our skin track back down for wind loading concerns.
The toe of Wapta icefield is threatened by a new ish (2021) cliff band that is poking through from the ice melting back and getting worse every time I see it, I hope this remains a good ski line in years to come but it's not looking promising.
Probed 310cm on the glacier near the Onion, and 280cm a few hundred meters closer to St Nicholas peak. Fantastic coverage for January. Ski quality was OK.
Warm temps, don't think it got below -5 or so which was helpful given the winds. 5cm overnight.
Should be a good spring season with the excellent coverage so far.