Just out from a great week of ski touring with Ali Haeri, Mark Herbison and the Alpine Club of Canada group at the Fairy Meadow Hut.

With clear weather for most of the week we were able to climb and ski off many of the peaks and glaciers in area. Travel was fast and easy all week and ski quality was excellent during much of the week with 20cm of new snow just before we arrived. As the weather cleared and warmed the best skiing was found on high North and NW aspects but stayed good above 2500m to the end of the week. Crusts were present below this in the morning but we experienced some good corn skiing conditions at lower elevations on solar aspects by the end of the week.

On northerly aspects in the alpine we had no significant avalanche concerns other than watching for overhead hazard from cornices as the temperatures increased during the day. We saw no new avalanches on N aspects during the week. On steep solar aspects there was a rapid rise in avalanche hazard each day with daytime heating, and numerous loose wet and wet slabs were observed on steep solar aspects up to size 3 during the later half of the week. Below treeline thin snowpack areas were starting to go isothermal by the time we left.

We probed more than 3m of well settled snow on all the glaciers in the area and with the clear skies during the week glacier travel was straight forward. In some areas more crevasses were visible than in previous years, likely due to the hot summer last year, and a couple of the normal ski lines on the Granite Glacier had some new crevasses to avoid.

A great week of spring skiing in a wonderful location.