Kananaskis

Skied Rae Glacier area Sunday June 20. Conditions were cloudy most of the day, temperatures in the low single digits with a snow squall around 1pm. Hiked up to about 2300m before reaching snow. Lots of avalanche debris in the main bowl but found some decent skiing on the margins for the back half of June.

Summer trail is in good condition to 2200m. Good freeze last night. Crampons or and ice axe to chop steps is necessary early in the morning for the two remaining snow patches.. Good freeze made for good corn skiing on the way down.

3 km of pacth skiing then 3 km of hiking brough us to the base of alpine. On the glacier there was 10- 20 cm of new soft wind slab on the most recent crust which was bonding reasonable well. Probed between 150cm and 260cm of dense snow with multiple crusts. Top 400m skied like we'll settle powder. Mostly cloudy skis and moderate to strong west winds kept the alpine cool and prevented any new avalanches. Heavy and sticky snow below 2350m late in the afternoon.

Walked and biked up to 2300m. A size 2.5 wet loose from the previous week and much pin wheeling and small sloughs made it hard to find good skiing in steep terrain in the main north bowl. I went to the north slopes to the east of the main bowl. Made it to 3150m. There was a size 3 that wiped out the area a month ago but the snow surface had mostly recovered. The crust was quite burly and I bootpacked above 2600m. I needed boot crampons, as it was hard to kick step up the crust on any slope steeper than 30dergrees. Cold day with strong north winds and on and off snow, with rain at road level. Above 2800m there was 10cm of wind slab on the crust that was bonding well.. The isloated pockets of 20cm wind slab above 2950 was more reactive with some grapel and low density snow of the crust. Good corn skiing below 2400m and managed to skied down to 2200m. You might find better skiing on lower angle terrian where there is less Avi debris.

Left parking lot at 700am good freeze and supportive snow and easy skinning. Sunny all day. On the upper South slopes there was 30 to 60cm of dense settle snow on Fridays crust. Within the storm snow down 30 cm was a crust/ facet layer? the was giving moderate hand shears. Some cracking 10 cm down on the upper slopes where it was hot. Skied down at 145pm got lots of pin wheeling and one large human sized snow ball chased me down. Skiing was heavy hot pow. Got sticky halfway down. Supportive and mildy sticky on the way out. Should have got an earlier start.

Checked out tent ridge after the storm. We found 10-20cm of new snow on a firm but mostly edgeable crust on the eastern aspect of the bowl. West end of the bowl travels beneath a sun-exposed long cornice. Crampons would have inspired more confidence but we had none. The snow was dry when we descended around noon, but then the sun came out and by the time we got to the car the surface snow was wet. A few other parties in there but still lots of real estate left over. Impressive avalanche debris at the base from an old slide is visible but doesn't interfere much with skiing.

Sunny in the morning, cloudy in the afternoon. Still decent snow to be found up high. Travel down low is fast on hard crust. Steep, solar alpine slopes are difficult to cross - ski crampons recommended, we resorted to boot packing. Up as high as 2650m there was still temperature/sun crust on polar aspects but with 10-15cm of powder on top from the weekend storms. Down low in the afternoon, good skiing on the soft melt.

Crux of the day was the creek crossing. No snow bridges left that we found. 2-3 m wide open water which we barely managed to jump. The Dog Leg has slid with the recent mid week snow fall but did not run the full length. Both avalanches on the photo shows they had released from the upper summit rock bands. We had ski deep powder on a day with single digit negative temperatures on top of super hard crust. Sounds like we were on the edge of the snow belt as the min report for the Robertson traverse party from the same day reports amazing skiing!

The approach up the French was long as always, dust on crust, Creek crossings won't last much longer. Never seen so much avi debris so low in the valley. Visibility was in and out with flat light. Headwall has good coverage for a boot pack straight up. Kicking steps was good. Robertson glacier had a firm ice layer well covered with boot top powder. Skied amazing. So. Much. Fun. The burstall exit was in good condition for skate skiing but as long as always too.

Surprising good ski quality today. Below 2000m there isn't much coverage on the summer trail, so skis were shouldered for short sections on the way up. On the south face below the summer trail leading to Reads Tower the new snow was slabby and cracked up on the crust layer below which wasn't breakable. Ski crampons were mandatory. In the bowl below Reads Tower, soft new snow had accumulated. 10-15cms of light powder on the supportive crust. The steep wall before the main Sparrowhawk Ramp was tricky. I managed with ski crampons, but probably would have felt more secure bootpacking with crampons. Its steep, and there was very little purchase on that crust. Up above, the new snow was hardly wind affected and the cloud cover kept it cold. The small dip in the center of the ramp held 15cms soft snow all the way to the summit block. I probed between 160cm and 280cm with avg HS ~220cm on the ramp. The sun came out at first transition @12:15, greatly improving vis and making for a lovely descent. After finishing a second lap of the ramp around 2:00pm, the cold powder began settle in the heat and was slightly moist, then the clouds promptly blew in. Everything below Reads Tower felt untouched by the sun and the sheltered creek run BTL it had accumulated much more snow ~20cm. The skiing there was excellent. Had to climb out of the creek canyon, don't follow those tracks down unless you can rap on ice. The "sparsely" treed south slope above the canyon still held dry dust on supportive crust even at 4pm. There was enough coverage here to make it down to the road if you had rock skis and were cautious. I ended up A-framing for the last kilometer to the car. -8C in the morning, and -1C on the dash @4:30pm. All in all, excellent day. Dust on crust is in. But also the bears are out, don't forget your bear spray!

A few cm over night improved the skiing. The sun came out in full force from 12 to 130 and turned the 15cm of recent snow on the crust wet on solar alpine slopes to at least 2600m. A size 0.5 natural wet loose cycle on solar aspects below rocks occured soon after. The north aspect had 8 cm on the crust and skied surprising well. The strong north winds from the last couple days make it hard to predict which slopes will ski good.

Skied pig's back on Friday, April 24th, the skiing was decent, with roughly 5cm of fresh snow on a crust.

As expected, rapid rise of temp as sun hit snow at 10-12. The snow was sticky and wet by the time we got down to treeline after the descent. We approached in at 5:30 am, got to 3/4 up the col at 11:33 down by 11:44. sun wasn't on col yet, we were in -8 on average for am. We had a great descent on recent storm snow ( approx 10 cm ) from last night's storm. It was sitting on the seasons snow pack which was significantly rounded and bonded. The boot pack up col was very stable. We never saw signs of instability riding down but avoided all wind slab, and convex rolls. We felt on sind slab on convex roll near the bottom of our boot pack. We avoided it and it seems obvious to see.

Robertson glacier was mostly wind slab. Good over night freeze. Crust soften up below 2200m and was quite sticky at 3 pm. The avalanche debris was easy to go through. There was a size 1.5 storm slab/ size 1 wet loose cycle from 930 to 11:30am out of extreme terrian on east aspects above the approach slopes before the wind picked up. Some cornice drops pulled some small slabs but didn't entrain mass. South aspects had a few size 1 wet loose before the wind picked up. Protected south aspects had lots of pin wheeling.

Cam and I had once in a lifetime conditions today. We finally tagged the ski descent of Alan Kain's North East Buttress scramble on Mount Lawson. This wraps up a 35-year project. I have been eyeing that line since first learning to Telemark at Fortress. It is still full winter in the alpine.

Couple of laps at Engadine burn. -9C at 2050m, 20cm powder sitting on a sun crust. Conditions skied fast and well. Good fun, was -6C at the car 12pm.

Killer powder skiing in April! A fantastic day at Black Prince with about 30cm of new snow on top of the crust. It skied really well. We heard a monster avi in distance but could not see it due to the clouds. Probably coming off of Warspite or Black Prince.

Started off around 7:30 am, +7°c in town. Just before the saddle around 9:15 a.m. was -2°c. Cool winds coming up from the backside of the ridge were strong gusting extreme, helping keep the temps down. Minimal wind transport available at the saddle. Miner's Gulley had a supportive crust with moist snow underneath until treeline, then the crust lost support. Good coverage up high but lots of debris skiing. Two small size 1 loose dry avalanches came off the headwall as we exited lower slopes. No entrainment on any of the slopes below. First rappel is filled in with debris, though one step is ice (see photos). We still used the normal rap on the right (tat replaced). Second little bum scooch drop has tat around a small bush. Third drop with the chains still needs to be rapped (old handline broken in the ice). Walked out from there as the snow coverage was sparse.

Snow bridge to hero knob is gone. Possible to cross the creek but it had rained the night before and the sun got hot by 0830. Walked up to the first avy path which had slid a whole ago and could hear lots of avalanche activity above. Turned around here. Foggy down in the valley so we couldn't initially see if there was new snow up top as the nearby weather station had shown. Cleared when we got back to the car and any new snow that fell either melted off the trees or it rained afterwards.

We skied the NE aspect of tent ridge. There was a decent ~15-20 cm of soft powder on top of a layer of crust. We avoided avalanche runoff areas although there was clear evidence of a recent (longer than a week old, less than a month old) large slide (size 3+) in the area. We started early and were skiing cream cheese on the way out (13:30).

Started CMW traverse 6:30. Evidence of wet avalanche cycles everywhere. Snowpack is crusty. Day was cloudy so snowpack didn’t become isothermal. Didn’t bring skin wax, suffered up high, total clog. Hardpack and windaffected even in covered north aspects. Bear tracks seen in treeline.

Expecting a poor freeze we heading for the heights of the FHR traverse. Freeze seemed better than expected and didn’t really break down all morning. Start 6:30, end 1ish. Fast travel up the French drainage. Hole in the wall is looking pretty rocky (pics attached). The head wall to the Robertson has been heat hammered, very little snow remains at points. The boot pack was fairly simple with some moderate rock scrambling near the ridge crest. Robertson skied OK, a bit hooky with a wind skin at the top. Probed 3m on the Haig in a few spots. Didn’t notice any concerning sags on the way down. The avalanche debris from the big event doesn’t impact the ski slope. Decent day out!

Warm, sunny/cloudy day. Planned to do super slope but we changed our mind after hearing what sounded like a moderate avalanche to the North at around 13:00 while we were uptracking through the cutblock. We decided to ski Tryst chutes instead for some less sun-affected North facing terrain.

Attempted the FHR Traverse. Left the parking lot around 6:30 am temperature was around -2C (warmer than we expected) with zero wind. BTL snow was very crusty anywhere it was exposed to the sun or wind. Travel was fairly easy sticking to the skin track. Reaching the first slide paths on the east side of Mt Burstall there was debris from a very large slide that rant to valley bottom (size 3.5 /4?). We gave South / East facing slopes a wide berth. Around 9:00 am we started to see pinwheeling and wet loose slides coming off the south/east faces, frequency and size increased. Around 10 / 10:30 we reached the moraines below Mt Robertson (~2300M) temperature was approx +5C. We had expected Alpine temperature to be above freezing around 1PM. We noted heavy wind effect, decreasing visibility as we approached the glacier and increased natural avalanche activity (notably on shaded aspects). We pulled the plug on the day, and quickly made our way back to the car. We saw a very fresh size 2 slide that covered the skin track, and travel became difficult with warming snow that stuck to skins. Back at the car around 12:30 we could hear avalanches from the valleys above.

Mid day 4 degrees, saw slopes becoming isothermal.

Went out in search of dry snow and found it in some tight, north facing glades between 2100 and 2300 meters. Dug a test pit at about 2300 meters and found 170cm height of snow. Bottom 90 cm was depth hoar with a 20cm thick dense (1 finger) slab on top. This was capped by a 10cm thick crust-facet-crust sandwich. A compression test produced a CTM14 non-planar break failure on this facet/crust combo. The overlying slab was 25cm of 4 finger dense snow grading into 15cm of soft dry powder on top.

Late start to Tent Ridge. Skied avalanche path. Quick hand dig showed maybe 20cm over debris, that did not want to move. Got to 2260m and descended at just about 1pm. No pinwheeling or other signs of instability at that time. Snow was heavy and starting to get a little grabby, but still fun skiing.

Beat the sun to Purple Knob, but the downhill conditions were quite poor with significant overnight wind. Carried ski crampons but never needed them. Most of yesterdays skin track filled in except in protected areas. Add in previous tracks and I’d give it a miss till a refresh. Best skiing was larch triangle above Hero’s approach. Back to the car by 1030 Dogleg track could really be re-routed to the road to the east, overly steep right now. Purple track is mint. Crossing of the creek to dogleg is on its last legs. Could fail any day.

Some rolling chunks observed off cornices from afternoon heating. Moist snow on solar aspects in ALP by late morning on a mix of sun and cloud. HS 160cm and March 24 crust down 45cm at 2150m. Noticed some facets immediately below the crust. Excellent ski quality in ALP and good mashed potatoes in sheltered BTL mid afternoon. Creek crossing still good to access blacksmith ridge from the road.

Generally good, fun skiing on Mt. Sparrowhawk today. We skinned from the car although the lower trail was a little thin. The trees on the way to the crest of the west ridge of Read's Tower held more snow varying between crusty to powder. We saw old crowns and avalanche debris on both sides of the bowl leading to the col between Read's Tower and Sparrowhawk. It should also be mentioned that there are some significant cornices above this bowl on Read's Tower. The old slides resulted in some thin slopes (rocks) on the final approach to the col. The moderate slopes leading up Sparrowhawk above the col had a few spots where scree poked through, but was generally adequately thick for skiing. The final scramble to the summit was a mix of bare scree and variably thick, dense snow on scree. The ski down was generally good quality powder, but line choice was important to avoid sharks, particularly below the col. The trees skied surprisingly well, but the snow was getting soft and a little wet in the afternoon. We walked the final 15minutes to the car to preserve our bases.

Skied the commonwealth/pig tails traverse and connected to Tryst. Lots of folks on the traverse (20+). Generally quite good conditions, though as soon as sun hit the big face above the skin track after commonwealth lake saw a couple decent size slides. Skiing down from commonwealth was quite good and very fast. Climbed trees next to super slope to get to tryst, and my lord don’t forget your skin wax. Anything below 2200 m was very wet, and very gloppy. Made for a long day when carrying an extra 4 lbs per step. Skiing some of the steeps at tryst were good but also pulled multiple size 0.5s and 1s of powder on top of the rain layer crust. Ran far and fast.

Great snow on polar aspects. Easy trail breaking. South and West had some wet snow and crusts but not everywhere. Had some cracking on steep south aspects on the most recent crust around kick turns. Avoided Avi debris the whole tour. Going down the East aspect into commonwealth vally stuck to the trees as the Avi path had debris.

Amazing day on Hero's Knob. -19°C at the car at 9am. We broke the trail in 30cm+ of fresh snow under a sunny sky all day. The snow got heavy on the way up around 11am as the sun was hitting hard the south aspect slopes. The way down in the bowl just had the best snow: deep, supportive, light. The turns were just the best! -2°C back at the car at 2pm.

Amazing day on Hero's Knob. -19°C at the car at 9am. We broke the trail in 30cm+ of fresh snow under a sunny sky all day. The snow got heavy on the way up around 11am as the sun was hitting hard the south aspect slopes. The way down in the bowl just had the best snow: deep, supportive, light. The turns were just the best! -2°C back at the car at 2pm.

On the second lap the first skier triggered a size 1 that was about 15m wide and ran 150m on the recent storm snow. Although it the avalanche ran far and wide, it was only the top 10cm. The skier did not know they had triggered the avalanche until stopping at the bottom of the slope.

Facets, sugary ice layer at 200cm 35cm powder 8 elbow taps causing cracking, collapse after 7 shoulder taps. Looks solid from march 24 crust and below. snowpack isothermal after 12. no sign of new avalanches.

Good travel up the French drainage with 10 to 25cm on the march 24 rain crust up to TL. Slope up to the Robertson sir Douglas col is largely bare rock. We followed steep snow up climbers right, but snow could be avoided. Robertson glacier had a thin breakable crust from wind effect which made skiing challenging. Lots of avi debris to get thru or try to avoid below the glacier. March 24 crust is 15cm thick at 2000m.

Rummel Ridge - probably the best coverage I've seen in Kananaskis. Started at -8c and warmed to +3c on return, a bit warmer than forecast. Snow surface beginning to get wet. About 25cm boot pen trail breaking. Didn't find anything concerning today but stuck to lower angle slopes regardless. Lots of old debris everywhere from the cycle last week, including off Rummel Ridge.

Went into the Murray basin to the base of Sweet 16. I’ve skied this area for almost 15 years and have seen the results of some big events there in the past with van-sized blocks, but this one.... well, it ran right across the valley to the north side where it took out some of the mature forest and made a good attempt at going UP the north slopes of Murray (but didn’t get far due to the solid tree wall). I didn’t take any measurements, but the tallest points of debris looked to be at least 3x my height, so 5+ meters. I don’t know if it was actually Sweet 16 that went because I couldn’t see around the corner - the debris field covers most of the open basin and climbing up and navigating that debris field to get a look would have been very time consuming. I did see a huge crown line on the east-facing upper slopes of Smith Dorrien that for sure contributed. Those lower, open, east-facing slopes of the Murray basin had not slid. Further east in the valley, along the north-facing open slopes that folks ski... 95% of this area has also slid. Start zones looked to be around 250m from the valley bottom at the base of the cliffs. Picked a way up through the debris and skied the 5% that had not slid, and it was actually great snow, maybe 30cm fresh, but good lines were hard to come by. Extreme care was needed because in the 95% of the area that had slid there was around 15cm of powder over hard avy debris with a mine-field of scattered, buried bowling balls that would be ankle breakers. Sorry, no photos.

Miners looked white from town, so we decided to go up for a lap and see how conditions have changed since the big cycle. Lots of new snow on the Ha Ling trail, average boot pen on the upper half of the trail was knee deep as we broke trail up. Consistent moderate to strong southwesterly wind at ridgetop with light wind transport. Recent debris from a few size 1-1.5s out of extreme windloaded terrain, looking to have been cornice triggered and mostly running loose. A belayed ski cut at the top of the line produced cracking up to 1m off the ski in the immediate lee and loose dry entrainment in the top 10cm, slab property to the new snow quickly tapered below the top few meters. A couple hasty pits in the upper 50m of the slope showed 50-80cm right side up fist to 4-finger snow on top of the March 20th raincrust, 3cm thick, pencil resistance. Hand shears produced resistant breaks just above the crust. Around 2250m the crust became pretty bulletproof Deep powder skiing conditions on the upper section of the line and in the bowl as long as you stay off the avy debris. As you'd expect, the lower bowl and canyon were rough, but we were able to (survival) ski all the way to Quarry lake. Feels like early November skiing BTL. Tons of rocks to hit, and lots of icy avalanche debris to pick your way through. Debris ran just past the first rappel and filled it in so that it is now sidesteppable on skis. We only had to use the rope for one short rap near the bottom.

Great turns at Black Prince. About 25-30 cm on top of a very firm crust. Noticeable when skinning up, but skied great on the way down. Boot top powder. Got fairly busy at the end of the day. Lot's of evidence of the carnage from earlier in the week in the run out zones off Warspite and Black Prince proper.

(Report submitted by Kelly Pothof)Massive sized 4 avalanches and widespread avy debris witnessed that ran to valley pass bottom on both sides of the pass completely blocking route up to Robertson Glacier. Crowns observed running basically entire length of the pass on the EAST facing headwalls from Burstall creek bed all the way South up the pass into the glacier. Large trees destroyed in path run. Blocks the size of small cars on Avy runouts almost 8m deep.

Snowpack wet and heavy. Pinwheeling. Icy conditions. Avalanches seen everywhere.

Snowpack wet and heavy. Pinwheeling. Icy conditions. Avalanches seen everywhere.

Hard, supportive crust made for fast travel and a bone rattling descent across refrozen water runnels. It rained to at least 2400m. Felt quite stable today, though many recent avalanches in the area.

Excellent skiing and trailbreaking. Stayed between -1 and -3 a on the polar aspects between 1900m and 2300m keeping the snow dry. Chute 2 had a natural size 1 wind slab avalanche from the last couple days, the east bowl off shark had a size 3 persistent slab from much earlier in the week that ran far to vally bottom with 1.5m crowns. The wind picked up mid afternoon and we observed 2 size 1.5 avalaches come down from mountain top in extreme. terrian on North aspects. Probably some small cornices pulling small wind slabs and entraining mass. Heard a larger Avalanche from Bryant Creek vally at the same time. Ridge crests and open areas and in the basin where the wind had gotten to the snow had a very slabby feel to it. Minor whumpfing in the boulder field. Dug a snow profile on North aspects at 2150m With compression and ECT giving no results. Found persistent week later down a 1m as 2-3 cm of 4Fingers facets surrounded by 1 finger facets. The sun came out at 4pm and it was a sticky skiing on the lower elevations crosscountry ski trails and +4 at the parking lot.