I climbed the North Bowl of Andromeda yesterday July 16th, descending the East Ridge to the AA Col. While the bowl itself is still holding a good amount of snow, bergschrunds are opening on both the way up and the way down, and the steeper lower half of the East Ridge is almost fully bare, exposing a large amount of loose stacked blocks. I would not want to go back into the terrain on the East Ridge until more snow is present to lock the slopes in better.

Despite temperatures around +13-14 in the moraines above the Snocoach road at 0345 in the morning, we had a reasonably good overnight freeze with fast travel up to the schrunds below the North Bowl. Several stacked crevasses guard the upper route, and while recent wet loose avalanches had partially filled some in, it took some time to figure a way through.

The route itself was easy travel from above the schrunds to the summit ridge, with snow up to one easy pitch of mixed rock & ice followed by 3 full pitches of ice. The summit ridge was likewise easy travel, down to the top of the last steep section leading down to the AA Col.

This last steep buttress took several hours to negotiate. We removed several old rappel anchors (permafrost melting loosened the rocks around them) and had to resort to some… involved… short roping descents on stacked piles of chossy shale. As above, I would not be in a hurry to return this season.

The AA Col descent was comparatively simple. Straightforward snow descent and a couple lowers took us to above the yawning schrund, and we traversed towards climbers’ left just above the rim of the crevasses to near the Athabasca side where we were able to cross easily.

There were a considerable amount of size 1 loose wet avalanches off of solar aspects on the east-facing slopes of Andromeda (beside the Silverhorn), starting around 0930. Daytime temps in the shade hovered around +6-7, and while we didn’t observe any activity on more shaded aspects there’s still enough to slide later in the day.