While temperatures are still below seasonal averages (and forecast to remain below seasonal averages for the foreseeable future), spring has finally sprung in this part of the world. No more -20 degree wake-ups, and the temps in the valley are soaring to mid single digits. It's comfortable to have a beer on the patio again!
Sub-zero temps a the top mean that Polar aspects are still in mid-winter conditions, but the strong April sun has brought some melt freeze on the Solar aspects...in all elevations.
Ski conditions are probably closer to typical mid-March than almost mid-April, and snow coverage is very, very good.
If you are a fan of early spring skiing, and you don't mid following the sun throughout the day, I would say conditions are excellent. If you have your heart set on skiing south faces early in the morning, it might be a bit rough....
I skied the Lake Louise area both days this weekend. We did some lift supported backcountry on Saturday, skiing 4 of Lake Louise's classic sidecountry stashes, with a few inbounds runs thrown in the mix.
First up was the Purple Bowl. The Purple Bowl is most commonly accessed via the bootpack to the Elevator Shaft run, above the Larch Chair. As Elevator Shaft is in bounds, the boot-pack is frequently traveled, and in pretty good shape. To access Purple Bowl, hike to the top of Elevator Shaft, duck the boundry rope and continue on to the summit ridge of Lapalian Mountain. Purple Bowl is the bowl between Lapailian and a subsidaiary peak, "Purlpe Mound" located northeast or Lapalian Proper. The Purple Bowl drops to the North side.
This area is uncontrolled, and steep enough to slide. While it is a popular slack-country destination, it is back-country terrain, not simply an extension of the resort.
We were in a bit of a cloud, but found some really nice, silky snow!
Finishing the hike
Skiing down
Next up, we skinned back up Purple Bowl and connected to Wolverine Ridge. This is the ridge directly across from Larch runs like Rock Garden and Lynx. During periods of good stability, you can skin directly up the south face of Worlverine Ridge from the bottom of Purple, but the sun was strong on Sunday so we decided to play it safe and take the long way.
We found good snow in the Northeast face of Wolverine, but decided to move on with our lift serviced tour.
After a break at Temple Lodge, we skied to the Summit and exited the resort on the West Boundary of the Outer Limits run. This brought us to a popular slackcountry area called the West Bowl. The West Bowl had received a lot of sun that day, so we carefully traversed above the bowl and made our way around a shoulder to the North Facing Pipesone Bowl, which again held light dry powder.
After Pipestone we carefully returned to the resort via West Bowl, avoiding some of the interesting terrain at tree lines (cliffs and couliors) due as the snow was getting a bit wet. This wasn't the most interesting part of the day, but still made for a satisfying conclusion.
Map of the terrain.
On Sunday, we skied inbounds all day. The resort reported 5cm of fresh overnight, but it skied like more. Again, polar aspects were best in the morning with ER6, Swedes and Whitehorn 2 holding the best snow. By late afternoon, the solar aspects softened up, and we enjoyed some really fun soft bumps, Exhibition, under the Ptarmigan chair was a highlight.
Lots of good skiing left. I think we are about a month behind our normal spring schedule!
softest bumps were definitely on the backside, hard icy and massive bumps on the front side. Paradise was pretty icy though. We found a tiny bit of untracked off of outer limits and on upper meadowlark - it was ok in the shade, but definitely crusty in the sun. My choice of ungroomed yesterday: Kiddie's Corner and Split rock were really soft and bumpy and fun. Snow quality was great. We didn't ski off of the backside of the platter yesterday because some in the group didn't want to, and we were more focused on hanging out, so I can't say how conditions were there.
