Regional Summaries

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.

The amazing weather continues. Thunderstorms and some rain in most areas for Thursday night, but mainly sunny through the weekend with good overnight freezes possible.

The big story in the Banff/Kootenay area and numerous other areas in BC are the forest fires, which have prompted some area closures. Check websites for the region you are planning on visiting for developments on these. As well, more than one party has been smoked out of their climbing objective in the Rockies this past week due to air quality.