Cirrus-Wilson

**Parties on Snivelling, Left, Central, and Right. **It takes a 70m rope to combine P1 + P2 with very little rope to spare. **P1 had fracturing bulges but generally ok with good pro. P2 is steeper with a little more sun effect. Ice sports a little more chandelier and featured ice but generally good pro. Getting into the cave has snice covered mushroom climbing. Very little good ice to protect without heavy clearing but the shower is heavy and discourages lingering. Put your hood up at least or a hardshell is nice. **Cave is roomy but has lots of chandeliered ice. I found decent ice on the right. It extends far behind the Central Pillar curtain, 10m+. **Its possible to climb the gap of the cave before committing to the face. The lower ice of the pillar was heavily chandeliered and featured meaning it took digging to get screws in good ice. My buddy lead it and figured it improved after a few metres but it was still challenging and definitely worked me over. The shower getting into the cave gives wet climbing on the pillar at times. Take care to watch your feet for breaking mushrooms and ice, while tool placements had some nice sticks between ice features. **Worth noting that while a 70m rope gets you into the cave, from the cave if you try making the top of the second pillar, you'll likely end up with a hanging stance. Find a sheltered belay before the last pillar and then a third 70m rope length should put you at the top. **Moving sideways across the ice you'll see a number of wet then dry lines. Gives you the option to find some tacky wet ice at times. **Beware that the nature of the ice above the pillar leads to copious amounts of ice falling. If you arent at a similar height to parties on the Left/Central lines, you may get hit. There is no way to avoid knocking ice off on the Pillar.

I'm in two minds making this report. I want to share information but do not want to be responsible for 'opening the flood gates'. I feel we had perfect conditions for our climb yesterday. Wx: Wind was calm throughout the day with a few moderate gusts in the afternoon. Temps hovered around -5C. The sun made an appearance as there was about 30% cloud cover, snow balled up a bit under the crampons during this period but there were no other signs of solar input. (We did see evidence of pin wheeling, minor sluffing from previous days solar input though). There was some avy debris in between several pitches, but there doesn't seem to have been a major avalanche through the route to date. PC has not seen any recent traffic, we basically broke trail from the road. This added several hours to the climb. In the immediate area of the climb we did not experience any snow instabilities. Although we post holed through .75m snowpack on occasion, there was never any indication the snowpack would slide. 'Turning the pencil' was full on wallowing, I was happy to have some younger legs (JC) put a track in. We utilized an alpines style running belay through this section of the route. Ice: we solo'd the approach ice, roping up for the last 3 pitches to get above the pencil. We climbed the upper tier in 3 x 70m rope stretchers. Grades went 4-4-5. The ice on these pitches was amazing. We had about 9 raps to get back down. Car to car we were 14.5 hours. Although this is much longer than the recommended time to be in the throat of this route, we never felt threatened by the weather/changing conditions. Although we had our 'day' yesterday, I would advise anyone contemplating this route to realize that even when you have everything lined up, things can go wrong. The mountains can change rapidly & my description of conditions is not a green light.

Don't rappel the pencil right now, it's considering touching down, and you might bring it down on yourself if you do so. We walked around the approach ice, and found the remaining pitches to be good climbing, although generally quite wet. We bailed before the last pitch due to time. It is bone dry and would probably be notably harder than the second to last.

There is a very strong sun crust on slopes that face the sun on Mt Wilson.

Wx: Temps hovering about 0c at the parking lot at 9:30am. When the sun rounded the corner it felt very hot. Luckily it disappeared behind clouds after about an hour. When the sun was out there was the occasional small sluff from above. The majority of the wall is sun affected with 1"-2" of snice. The RH side offered a sheltered corner that offered good ice with stiff climbing on P2. We traversed right on P3, again looking for a line that was not beat up from the sun. We topped out at the start of the 'new' rep line. A party or LH did not top out, opting to rap after 2 pitches. I could not recommend the center line right now.

Good day on Weeping Wall Left. The ice climbed well, with some lingering effects from the recent cold snap making themselves known with dinner plating at bulges. The very top of the left hand wall has minimal climbable ice, and only a few lines are possible to the trees.

Great ice conditions today. -15 or so most of the day, sun was very welcome. A lot of new ice on most lines on Weeping Wall. Some minor sluffing as the sun hit various walls but no avalanches seen. Icefields Parkway a skating rink.

Observations from the car: **9.30am - Polar Circus had high winds above the climb moving quite a bit of snow around. No avalanches or spindrift observed coming over the climb. **2.00pm - Mixed Master to Snivelling Gully. Heavy sloughing of loose dry from steep walls. More spindrift also observed further south. **Weather was negative single digits in the morning (maybe -7c ish) and around -1c as we were heading home in the afternoon (2pm ish). Weather was supposed to have been a mix of sun and cloud but was mostly cloudy and somewhat windy at times. Around mid day up at Panther Falls we had light snow falling but I didn't think it was much accumulation at the time. I suspect it was this new snow we observed releasing from cliffs both north and south of the Weeping Wall area. The releases were from steep slabby areas and ledges on the cliffs rather than from above the cliff.

Climbed Snivelling with the intent to take Mare to the top. 2nd pitch is in bad shape with the low angle ice absent, leaving large & gaping (scary deep) holes w flowing water to negotiate. Would recommend taking the steeper ice to the left about 90m into Snivelling. Upon topping out the sun was in full force, -4. We made the approach to Mare & set up a belay. Upper slopes a mix of sun crust, wind slab, & facets. Significant pinwheels on the slope near us, alongside a number of sluffs from above had us pull the plug.

Lots of deep unconsolidated snow on ledges with some slabs beginning to form. Saw lots of small sluffs coming down around on most cliffs and easily released while climbing. Climbing was very brittle with lots of big fracturing and horizontal cracking. The final pitch was very fat and climbed more like WI3+/4.

Climbed the Totem Pole today. We went here because the avalanche danger is 3x LOW, the air is cold and the sky was overcast which is the combination you want to climb here. This is huge avalanche terrain and any sun will effect the bowls above. Today was a good day, the snowpack was locked up tight and we did not see any new avalanche activity. A very large avalanche has run over the climb previously and the entire way was avalanche debris or scraped, hard snow from the avalanche passing through. This made for good travel on the snow between pitches, along with a trail from previous ascents.

Climbed Weeping Wall Right today, and other parties climbed Left and Sniveling Gully. Ice conditions were a mix of wet ‘hero’ ice and dry brittle older ice. Route is in decent early season shape. Snowpack both above, below and around the area seemed generally stable with storm snow overlying a decomposing crust. Observed some evidence of recent, possibly solar triggered point releases on the slopes left of Sniveling.

Climbed Weeping Wall today. The day was cloudy with calm winds. Snowing S-1 through the day. -7 when we left the car and -4 at 2pm. Ice was generally plastic.

Climbed first few pitches of Polar circus. Turned around after seeing evidence of a recent (<48hr) sz 1 wet loose point loose N/NW aspect.

facets to the floor in the drainage approach. Ice nine was running real we, no bottom pillar and a ways off. some older ice debris near the top, but nothing running out down the drainage. more sun affected rock releases/debris coming down than snow/ice. the zone is a sun catch. up trail was tough with plunging through facets and snagging deadfall. surface oar in the AM, then the sun took care of that.

Report sent to Parks Canada from a party on Polar Circus: Two of us climbed Polar Circus, Friday (yesterday). It lightly snowed for most of the morning and then the sun popped out. Some wind. Our approach through to the top was uneventful. On the descent, there were some small avalanches between the top of the pencil and the final pitch. The path and all our tracks were lost (not to be found). The pencil approach had a few chunks and so did the approach to the traditional first pitch. The path to the first pitch was obliterated with chunks as much as 24" in diameter.