Regional Summaries

The weather forecast is looking good for this coming weekend in the Rockies and the Columbia Mountains. At this time most areas are predicting a cloudy night on Saturday with small amounts of rain but, otherwise, it looks like clear skies and warm temperatures overall.

Most if not all alpine rock climbs are now in good condition and have been seeing traffic. Rogers Pass, the Valhallas, and the Bugaboos are all in excellent condition. The snow is quickly melting off of the glaciers however travel continues to be quite good.

We are officially in early summer conditions, and the weather looks promising through the weekend into next week with sunny skies and the odd afternoon storm.

The Bugaboos are drying out, although there is over a meter of snow at the Applebee campground, and the snowline starts at the Kain hut. Reports are of fast morning travel with an overnight freeze and many of the South and East aspects are mainly dry. The higher peaks (Pidgeon and Howsers) are still very snowy with cornices and will need some time.

It has been rainy and mostly fairly calm the past couple of days in both ranges. Freezing levels have been observed as high as 3350m(11,000 ft) and light snow has been reported as low as 2300m along the Rockies Divide and in the Bugaboos yesterday. All the rain and warm air will help settle the snowpack somewhat in the long term but it was a deep moist "slushie"of a snowpack up to at least around 2700m yesterday at Lake O'Hara. My guess would be that conditions are similar at that elevation throughout the ranges.

Warm, grey and humid in most of the Rockies and Columbia Mountains either at present or sometime today. A bit of snow and rain has fallen overnight according to the few weather stations still up and reporting. From the limited reports it looks like it has been fairly calm in the past 24 hrs most places with some moderate to strong winds from the SW along the Rockies Divide.