23 Jan 2013


    The clouds rolled in fairly early yesterday morning.

    Looking south east of the approaching clouds.

At 2260 meters the temperature was -6, winds were 40-75 KPH from the SSE. At 1650 meters the temperature was - 2, 1 cm of new snow was recorded there. In the valley it was -4. Observations taken at 06:00.

For the forecast a cold front will pass today with some minor ridging before the next front comes into our zone tomorrow morning. This is the first front we have experienced in two weeks. At long last we can say good bye to the January dry spell. Guesstimates: 5-10 cm today, Flurries tomorrow, 5-8 cm by Friday morning, 5-10 cm Friday, a light flurry Saturday. Not a lot of snow from this unsettled onshore flow.

The local updated avalanche advisory: Blackcomb Snow Safety


38-40 Yaks killed in an avalanche in Kinnaur District: India

Death toll in Himachal Pradesh reaches 7: Northern India

Rega, The World's most Badass Air Rescue Service: Swiss Rescue

24 year old woman still in critical condition after avalanche on Jan 19: Glencoe, Scotland


    The cloud opened up to reveal a bit of sun light.

    The darker colour in the picture is all the dust and small rocks which have been blown around  
    during the dry windy conditions in the past 2 weeks.

    Near the end of the day the sky was still some what clear to the North West of Whistler.





Thanks to Justin Coughlin for the amazing pictures and great intel:

Hi Wayne,

Keep up the good work with the blog again this year!  I'm a daily reader love the information!

I did the Garibaldi Neve in a day with some friends on Saturday and figured I pass on a brief report of the conditions along the route.

We took the high route over the Gargoyles to Diamond Head, below the SE face of Atwell and had fun picking our way through the icefall instead of dropping down Ring Creek.  We decided it would be best to rope up through the icefall as there were plenty of wide open slots in and around the towering seracs and likely some thin snow bridges that we crossed over.  Even after meeting up with the standard route past the Tent we skied past a few large open crevasses above the Shark Fin (I've attached a picture of one that you pass right by).  We had been hoping for a side trip to the peak but the North face of Garibaldi still has a large open bergschrund and many smaller slots below (poor contrast photo attached).

In general travel was very quick.  Snow was buffed higher on the Neve but we did get some great turns in flat lighting down the Sentinel Glacier.  Surprising the ski out to the Rubble Creek trailhead was in fantastic condition (soft snow thanks to the warm day / evening) even at 8pm with headlamps.  Skied all the way out and encountered very few rocks just a couple small creek crossings in the final 2km.

Justin