Before writing this I read the other club trip reports from the weekend reporting quiet trails. Surprisingly, to me, Wolverine valley later in the day was, I thought, quite busy with maybe 15-20 back country skiers in the area. Fortunately we were the first party in the area and had a nice untracked first run in the upper valley.

Ascending Wolverine valley

This was after a lunch had just on the north side of the ridge as the very ridge top had some wind. On the way up Cathy dug a pit and got results, not surprisingly, very consistent with the avalanche bulletin on a north aspect at about 2300m.


John testing Cathy's column.

This column failed in the moderate range on the basal facets 150-165 cms down but you could find the "December 31st" layer 45 cms down.


John found December 31st layer 45 cms down in this location but not reactive.

For a second run we went further along the ridge and this run was quite nice to start but we ran into tracks lower down.


Wolverine ridge

We debated going up for a second run (there was an up track here) but there was mixed enthusiasm given the bottom half being even more tracked up now so we headed out. The ski out below Temple lodge was very fast and hard with Carl's watch reporting his maximum speed of, I think 57 km/hr. I was following Sim so probably closer to her more sedate 37 Km/hr!


View of the Lake Louise peaks from Temple lodge ski out - skier is Bill

With the fast run out we were back at the cars before 2:30 pm We found the back country off trail conditions in this area area excellent at the moment - similar to the Healy/Bourgeau and Whymper trip reports of the last week. Thanks to participants: Sim,Bill,Carl,John,David,Cathy,Chris,Peter from John (C/S). Special thanks to Cathy and Bill for the photos and Cathy for her hard work digging the pit!

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