Great morning in the Miner's Gully above Canmore today. Ha Ling trail is till fully snow covered with a good track packed down. We used approach shoes and carried our skies almost to tree line although one could have probably started skinning much earlier. We dropped in at 9AM with 5-10 cm new snow overnight, which was overlying a thin crust over another 5-10cm dry snow on a carrying crust. Snow was still dry in the AM but caught a lot of sun later and frozen tracks may make the skiing in the initial steep gully tricky in the early hours for the days to come.

Coverage is good until the gully narrows. First cliff is easily avoided on the skier's right (we partly walked this section). The shorter, lower two cliff steps in the creek we avoided by walking down the forest skiers left to intercept the Highline Trail.

Lots of previous sluffing out of the steep cliffs skier's right of the gully but otherwise no evidence of avalanche activity.