Spent the past several days hiking up the Moose River Route from.Highway 16, over Moose Pass to Smokey River, then over Robson Pass to Berg Lake and out the Berg Lake Trail. Saw no people or large wildlife until Berg Lake - a small handful of hikers still here. Plentiful moose tracks, wolf too - zero bear sign. The lack of leaves on the shrubs made for good sightlines (except in regenerating burns) - this would not be the case here in Summer! The days were fairly sunny though cool. Strong then moderate NW winds at ridgetop (wind transport looked limited, isolated to ridgetop); River levels were very low and remained low, with the sun only sending the snowline retreating a short way up South aspects. Cold nights, hard frosts bridging the bogs. Fords of Resplendent crk, Moose River and Smokey River were scarcely more than boot-top, same goes for the only occasional mud. Sacrificial river-crossing runners were still key. As is probably usual there were some blow-down shintangles, swamp-hopping shenanigans, and routefinding trickery (ie off trail travel or close to it) in the Moose, particularly the mid section (either side of Trio) but also signs of recent trail maintenance througout the trip. Snow appears at 1600m, but still only spotty in the open at Steppe Creek and Berg Lake campgrounds. Ramps up to 20cm loose snow amongst the trees below treeline, slowing travel (drafting wolf tracks helped) but only 5-10cm where more exposed to the elements at treeline (Moose Pass 2030m). Trail from Berg Lake down to Emperor Falls was thin packed ice from hikers - a pole was valuable . For the climbers - generally less snow around than expected, for any given elevation perhaps drier than Jasper / Icefields. North side of Robson devoid of much snow on the steep ice/rock, or ice on the rock; conversely the solar side looked to be holding more snow than expected - cold winds and little sun, at least till now. A few previous size 2 slab avalanches visible out of steep East facing alpine features, and a few loose wet avalanches ran in steep lower elevation solar on Tuesday. No waterfall ice that looked worth the heavy walk.
All in, this seemed like a great if chilly time for this hike, till the snow flies again.