Regional Summaries

The excellent conditions of late are met with change. The continued late summer heat with high freezing levels are helping the firn-snow line retreat just beyond optimal conditions and inducing rockfall. Guides in the Rockies and Columbias have been reporting rockfall events of various sizes. Most notably, a massive event on Mt. Bidle with accompanying dust cloud a few days ago. Popular zones that are changing quickly and seeing increased rockfall are the Bugaboo-Snowpatch col in the Columbia's and Mt. Lefroy in the Rockies.

In general the current conditions for alpine climbing in the southern part of the Coast Range are awesome. It has been warm and sunny for what feels like forever, with only minor disturbances the past couple of weeks that haven’t affected conditions and expected to continue into next week. Further north towards Alaska a low pressure system is expected to bring rain and possibly snow up high this weekend.

All alpine rock routes I can think of are currently dry. There may be some precipitation today in the southern parts of the range, but this should dry up by the weekend.

Its been one of the best summers for weather and general mountain conditions in a while. The big story is how good the snow travel is on glaciated terrain, and some areas still have lingering avalanche debris from the winter in features which extend quite far down in the alpine. These can be a nice break from the knee bashing scree if you can use them. Although the coverage is good for this time of year, crampons are becoming more and more a necessity as things dry up.

Amazing what a couple of weeks of warm weather can do! Approaches are all pretty much snow-free now, and while glaciers still have healthy coverage, it is getting thinner by the day, with the firn line (the boundary between between last winters snow and the lower-elevation exposed ice) getting higher and higher. Overall, in the South and the North Coast regions, glaciers and crevassed areas are still well bridged, and moats/bergschrunds are still passable, though starting to open up.