Spent the last handful of days guiding and riding around lake louise and the icefields parkway. Rode Surprise pass, Granddaddy Couloir, the Flower, Crowfoot Glades, Bow Summit and some other misc couloirs.

At and above treeline the travel conditions are quite good overall. North aspects are holding dry snow up to 20cm depending on the location and was sluffing in steeper terrain. South faces in the alpine had 10cm of snow (moistening a bit through the day) that was well bonded to the previous sun crust. For the time of year and the strong sunshine we noticed little solar effect overall.

The weekend had moderate-strong winds in the alpine that left 15-20 cm windslabs in lee areas of our traveled zones. If these slabs were on facets, they were reactive as of today (Tuesday), otherwise the windslab was well bonded.

The deeper persistent slab was observed to be well bonded to the underlying facets at several locations. However, today we did have several large settlements as we were skinning up an an alpine bowl.

In shallow areas the snowpack is rotten and heavily facetted making for tough travel conditions and below treeline the snow has a breakable crust making for interesting downhill sliding.

While winter avalanche conditions are prevalent and some minor travel difficulties exist, there's a lot of really good riding to be found.