Rob Owens and I headed out for a morning rip up St-Piran above Lake Agnus in Lake Louise. Fast travel up the summer hiking trail gained Lake Agnus. We skinned and boot packed up the south slopes to Goat pass between St-Piran and Niblock then up its SW ridge. Our goal was to ski the north facing avalanche paths but they were too icy and had lots of avalanche debris from mid-path to near bottom of path. We decided to ski the east slope back down to Mirror Lake. Skiing back down the hiking trail provided some extreme snowplowing that made the quads ache.
Weather: Broken skies all morning. At Lake Agnus it was-4 C @ 9am @ 2135m with calm winds. On the summit of St-Piran (2649m) we observed moderate gusting to strong west wind. No precipitation all day despite a promising weather forecast.
Snowpack: Melt-freeze crust (2cm thick) was strong and supported skis on south and east aspects. We did not venture on north and west aspects. The crust was still supportive down to 1950m by noon. Below 1950m the crust was breakable with moist snow underneath.
Ski Quality: Fast travel on supportive melt-freeze crust. Turns were noisy and fast; not dissimilar to Norquay first thing in the morning.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment