I spent the past four days (Sunday 21st-Wednesday24th) going from Bow Lake to Sherbrooke Lake while guiding for Yamnuska Mountain Adventures.

The most notable observation on our trip was that the ice on Sherbrooke Lake is flooded with up to 15cm of water capped by a 15cm crust. The crust was supportive today but on discovering the water I elected to stay close to the shore. If you punched through one way or another it would be a day wrecker at the very least.

As for avalanche activity we saw none during the first three days of our trip aside from spindrift avalanches on extremely steep and rocky lee terrain with the strong westerly winds that prevailed Monday onwards. Last nights 5-10cm and winds produced a few avalanches to sz 2 in steep cross loaded alpine gullies.

Though I didn't observe any signs of instability in last weeks storm slab we continued to avoid steep N&E windloaded features in the alpine given reports of sz 1-1.5 skier controlled and skier remote avalanches on these features this past Sunday.

The coverage on glaciers feels supportive. I found snow to be over 3m where travelled except a few spots around 250 on the tongue of Bow Glacier.

Crust wise it seems to have gotten as high as 2700m on solar terrain before the recent snow. It was catchy down to 2600m then supportive to 1900m today (about 15cm thick on the Sherbrooke Exit slopes). Below 1900m it is breakable if you're not on old tracks but still reasonable travel on skis.