Spent the last three days skiing in the Little Yoho bulletin region with a Parks Canada Visitor Safety team.
We travelled in to the Stanley Mitchell hut from the Takakkaw Falls road via the Iceline trail on March 9th, climbed Mt Des Poilus on the 10th, and skied out to Emerald Lake via Emerald Pass on the 11th.
Moist snow was present below 2000m and higher on solar aspects. Snow depths near treeline averaged 160cm with coverage on the glaciers ranging from 150cm at 2300m to over 200cm above 2500m in most areas. Some ice cliffs are present at the center of the toe of the Des Poulis Glacier to keep in mind if you are descending in a whiteout. Travel was easy on a wide variety of snow surfaces and crusts, and ski crampons were useful in several places.
The Mt Des Poilus area received some new snow on March 9th which made for very good skiing but is sitting on a buried sun crust. We had a whumph at the edge of the steep south face at 2950m and were able to trigger a size 2 avalanche, 25 to 40cm deep, that propagated 140m. It was a bit of an anomaly for the area, however it is something to keep an eye out for in similar high elevation areas along the divide that received recent snow. Travel across Isolated Col in both directions was straightforward with few avalanche concerns until it either snows again or heats up.
We saw no other avalanches but our other avalanche concerns included small isolated wind slabs high in the alpine, cornice failures, and slabs or wet snow avalanches out of steep solar terrain and at lower elevations with warm temperatures.
Cold morning temperatures allowed us to travel out to Emerald Lake early on the 11th with a supportive crust all the way to valley bottom, however travel was rugged below 1900m due to previous avalanche debris, and the crust was beginning to break down in the valley by 1130.
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