Jasper Visitor Safety ascended and skied the north glacier of Sunwapta Peak via Grizzly Creek and found overall fabulous spring ski mountaineering conditions.

A hard crust up to 2300m made for fast travel up to the alpine (ski crampons recommended) which on our descent between 1 and 2pm softened to some nice corn skiing. Above this there was generally ankle deep faceted snow with crusts on solar aspects up to 2900m, where the surface became wind effected, but no cracking or signs of instability were observed. We probed between 130cm and 200cm snowpack depth along the upper glacier which felt dense and well settled.

The massive cornices and seracs overhanging much of the north glacier were our biggest concern, which we were mostly able to avoid exposure to by swinging wide to the climbers left, and taking a lower bench to gain the glacier at a high col (blue line in photo). We also opted not to try and tunnel through the cornice on the summit ridge and descended from around 3100m.

A really great tour, and the only tracks we saw were wolverine and goat