[MCR] Rockies, Stanley Valley, Healy Pass area

My fellow guide, Adam Burrell, and I guided two ski tours over the last couple of days.

Saturday, Jan 19th, we toured into the Stanley Valley. The ski track into the valley has been set on the east side of the creek and not on the normal summer trail which is on the west side of the creek. The strong winds of last week have scoured and slabbed up the burned out forest there and the track setting is poor. A number of submerged trees that act like facette traps dropping you into a branchy basement. Travel is better once you gain the upper valley. We found the recent wind slab and the Jan 6th surface hoar layer (well preserved) in the pits we dug below the ice climb Nemisis. Numerous sudden planar shears on both of those layers with the wind slab down 15 cm and the Jan 6th down 25-30 cm. Compression tests from easy to hard, but mostly in the easy range and always sudden planar shears. Given that we chose to ski the shallowest slope between Nemisis and Suffer Machine (ice climbs). We got turns but they were far from stellar.

Sunday, Jan 20th, we skied towards Healy Pass then up a small peak east of Healy Pass. A much, much better snowpack in this area with good midpack strength and some decent and fun turns down the shallow slopes west of our peak.

Happy trails,

Barry Blanchard
Mountain Guide
www.barryblanchard.ca
www.yamnuska.com




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