Quick report
Route map, pictures, and captions at: https://www.strava.com/activities/18109245679 No signs of any snow instability, so this observation is all about the remaining snow cover for ski tour planning, with the major caveat that as I write this Wednesday morning, so much has probably already changed since my ski tour on Tuesday morning, and will change even more by the next clear weather window (which is now looking like Saturday). Starting at a little after dawn, TRT even right from the start had lots of water ice, which made for smooth walking, but quite slippery on sections with any pitch. I ended up skinning almost the entire way, since the micro slipping was a bit annoying, but the skinning felt snow. So somehow that early-morning ice provided poor grip for hiking yet poor glide for skinning! Lobster Claw was a good ascent route Tuesday morning, but the overnight rain since then has probably ended that. NE Snowfield was fine (with ski crampons required for skinning), although might have a relatively short life this year given how it compares to this time of the season in prior years. I didn’t take the connection all the way from there to the rim of the Bowl, but looking at a picture I took later on, might not last long. Getting into Right Gully from above was mildly arduous, tedious, and annoying but will soon become far more arduous, tedious, and annoying. Coming in from below will be fine for a long time, although the vert will increasingly become truncated at the top. (All of which is pretty typical for Right Gully.) Lip looked fairly easy to thread the needle between emerging cracks, but that might have changed overnight into fairly sketchy status. Chute looked great from below. Left Gully looked in great shape for the descending skiers, who had also set a bootpack so nice that I never bothered affixing my boot crampons (which I sure had needed just a bit earlier for Lobster Claw). Traverse from the top of Left Gully to the top of Hillman’s provided only a brief opportunity for skiing. Hillman’s up above the split was in great shape, both skier’s left and skier’s right. I took the latter for a bit more vert, and the usual crux wasn’t a crux at all. Below the split, many emerging boulders, holes, cracks, although still lots of life left in the line. A trivially short portage to the below-treeline exit trail, after sideslipping and sidestepping down the not-so-trivial debris pile from the March 26 avalanche (which came in from Dodge’s). The Sherb had the usual short portage on the wind-scoured and sun-exposed convex rollover after about the first 500’ vert, then amazingly enough I was able to keep my skis on the entire way until the closure with about 550’ vert of downhiking on the TRT. Although then again, most skiers would probably be amazed that I kept my skis on the entire way through all that! So please respect the USFS Sherb closure (wherever it might be moving up to in the coming days), as the avy ctr has been exceedingly generous in allowing us to ski this far down, and downhiking on the Sherb will lead to further erosion and a shorter season for it in future years.