We had an awesome day today traversing Mt Jupiter, starting and finishing at the Asulkan Brook.

We had good travel conditions starting with a good freeze at the parking lot. In the alpine we found 5-10cm of new snow from the past couple of days, which was still powder on north facing slopes in the afternoon. We probed over 300cm of snow below the toe of the glacier, but we could see many sags heading up The Cleaver and near the Sapphire Col Hut.

On the ridge traverse we had from half steps to boot top foot penetration with very little post-holing.

We did a 30m pitch of steep facetted snow to reach the summit of Pollux, which in places was only thinly covering rocks. We used our axes to hook the rock a few times to help with progress, feeling like mixed climbing. I don't remember it feeling that difficult last time I did the traverse this time of year in 2015, which I suspect was due to more consolidated snow.

We saw Black Bear tracks that looked like they were from yesterday afternoon heading up Asulkan Brook. It appeared to have gone over Asulkan Pass and down the other side.

We only saw two other people in the drainage today.

Photos attached.

Alex Geary and Dan Robb, ACMG Mountain Guides