From April 01 to 08, the ACMG Apprentice Ski Guide Exam took place at Snowfall Lodge.

The dynamic spring weather had its usual impact on the winter’s snowpack, but overall we found excellent ski quality on polar aspects and generally stable conditions. From April 1st to 2nd, 20-35 centimetres of new snow fell on various surfaces, including melt freeze crusts, facets, and surface hoar. Following this there was a mix of sun and cloud, calm winds and a warming trend. Strong solar input was observed throughout the week. Alpine temps ranged from -12 at night to -3 in the afternoon. Spring showed up on the last two days with the freezing level rising to 2000m, settling out the storm snow and creating moist snow on all aspects below 2000m.

We slowly stepped out, skiing supported low angle terrain for the first half of the week and into 40 degree terrain by the end of the week. We travelled between 2750m and1500m. We initially skied at tree-line, before moving into alpine terrain. We stuck to polar aspects as solars had rugged travel in the AM and poor ski quality in the PM. We travelled on glaciers with good visibility consistently probing 300cm+ with well bridged crevasses, and minimal sagging. We avoided thin to thick areas, steep glacier ice and unsupported terrain all week.

As the week progressed, we found a couple of layers of concern on more committing/steeper terrain: the March 24th and April 1st interfaces. In test profiles we observed sudden planar results on these layers in isolated areas. We did not directly observe the depth hoar/basal facets, however, this was always on our mind.
By the end of the week we had skied most of the classic objectives, but cautiously approached the larger more committing runs.

Overall ski quality throughout the week was excellent.

Light rain and wet flurries at the lodge (1580m) on the evening of the 7th before our flight out.