Last week's snow is slowly clearing off south-facing faces, but a fair amount still lingers in the alpine. The NW ridge of Sir Donald is snowy in the upper half of the mountain, and the West-face Bypass is plastered. It's looking very wintery and it would NOT be a place to go. Uto Peak is also snowy, with the ledges and upper pitches of the SW ridge holding snow.

A Visitor Safety team ascended Mt Rogers today via the S Face. They found 15-20cm of well-settled storm snow on the lower glacier that hid the ankle-biting, narrow crevasses that riddle the middle portion of the glacier. A rope is strongly recommended up there right now. The S Face had 30cm of new snow at the bottom, while near it's top and along the final summit ridge, up to 60cm of new snow sits on old neve. The heat of the day allowed the team to trigger loose, wet slides from above with snowballs, clearing the descent from hazard. The resulting mass, up to a size 1.5 avalanche, packed a punch by the time it reached the bergschrunds at the bottom, conveniently filling in some holes. You definitely wanted to be along the edges of the snow face versus stuck in the middle of the face.

For more up-to-date photos, please see the parksmountainsafety Facebook site:

https://www.facebook.com/parcssecuritemontagne/photos/?tab=album&album_i... French
https://www.facebook.com/ParksMountainSafety/photos/?tab=album&album_id=... English

On another note, the Group of Four restrictions in the Illecillewaet and Asulkan drainages have been lifted. The Group of Four restriction is still in place for the Connaught Drainage / Balu Pass.

Enjoy these beautiful autumn days!

Glacier National Park Visitor Safety