It looks to be a cooler week of weather and rain is expected for the weekend and beyond in most areas. This will be a temporary break from the great conditions on both rock and snow people have been reporting.
MCR Coast Range Conditions Summary - Posted by Ross Berg on behalf of Andrew Councell, IFMGA Mountain Guides
It is looking like it could be a fine weekend to be in the mountains.
The wet spring has left us with more midsummer snow than has been usual the past few years. Even though the snow line is slowly creeping up there is generally favorable glacier travel in lots of places and there are still decent conditions in some snow gullies and ice faces.
The unsettled weather we have experienced this summer looks like it will continue through Saturday as a cold front produces some showers and thundershowers throughout the Rockies and Columbia's. A clearing trend Sunday as a high pressure system moves in looks like the start of a great time to be up high on some bigger objectives. The rest of the week currently looks quite nice with the possibility of afternoon thundershowers and some more unsettled weather later in the week.
General Conditions.
The last week has brought us significant precipitation throughout the Rockies and Columbia mountains, in the form of rain and snow. The Bugaboos has seen 50mm of rain this week. Snow line is hanging around 2300m with trace to 10cm of new snow.
With all this rain, rock fall, moraines, and large rocks are unstable. Of note some mud slides were observed in the Bugaboo area.
Glaciers have much better coverage right now than the last few years. Travel ranges from excellent to post holing.
It seems that the extended spring Monsoon is at least temporarily easing up. Hopefully the next couple of forecasted clear nights will give us some good overnight freezes and the sunny days will dry off the alpine rock and ridges in places.
In case you hadn’t noticed it has been the summer of temperamental weather so far, and is currently slashing rain in Banff as I write.
Looks like the weekend could bring a short reprieve to this monsoonal weather we have been experiencing. Rogers Pass area is looking the driest, maybe... the bow valley will have a mix of everything, and the foothills is experiencing flooding in some areas, such as Cochrane.
Rogers Pass and the Bugaboos.
ACMG Mountain Conditions Summary for the Coast Mountains - June 27th, 2019
Posting the following report on behalf of Andrew Councell (IFMGA Mountain Guide)
The dry alpine rock with warm and sunny weather on the coast is temporarily on hold. Last night in the Sea to Sky Corridor we had a dusting of new snow down to around 1800m, with more towards the north on the Duffey Lake Road with what looked like about 10cm in the alpine (photo attached). Expect increased rockfall as the new snow melts, which will probably one of the biggest hazards this weekend. Cornices lingering from the winter and also still out there and collapsing, which I witnessed a couple of times in the past week.
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