Somehow I ended up on Marmot Basins mailing list and received a few e-mails letting me know they are open. Earliest opening day ever. Not bad looking conditions either.

http://www.skimarmot.com/u/snowreport.phtml

There is SNOW in the Spray Valley.
Dry along highways 1 and 40 until around Mount Kidd, then steadily more.
Nakiska has a suprising amount of snow on it - up on Olympic Summit and everything, so it seems that a good bit might be natural.
There's a foot and a half or so at the Burstall parking lot, and a good twoish in most of the area. We left a track around the Hogarth Lakes, where it was above my knees (but then, I'm short). Lakes seem frozen around the edges, though the snowpack is concerning. Lots of creeks around that are still flowing.
The snow appeared to be new and fluffy the whole depth, but was strangely dry.
A few skiiers were bound for Burstall Pass, which I'd bet has quite a bit more snow, but we didn't catch any on the return.

Was up there on the 5th as well, there is a skiff in the valley behind, probably overkill to use snowshoes. If you want to snowshoe, the Spray has good coverage. Skied Chester Lake / Elephant Rocks on the 12th and had the best early season conditions in years. Wandering off the track found ski pens of around 15cm in a 60 - 70 cm snowpack. Not like the Rockies.

Check out the following webcam of the Yamnuska area:

http://199.213.60.56/popup.html

Cheers
Rod Plasman

We were on Odlum Ridge (south of the Highwood Pass) yesterday. Lot's of snow. Much more than last year at this time. As expected the ridge itself was pretty much snow clear with 2 to 4 feet of snow on the lee side.

Thank you all for your kind input.

Regards,

Granticulus

Up to Chester Lake yesterday. About 2.5 feet of snow in the parking lot and most of the way to the lake, with some areas of up to about 4 feet. Snowed hard all day so there will be considerably more by now.

Thanks peakbagger13, was considering skinning up to Chester tomorrow but wasn't sure how much snow there would be. With 2.5 feet of snow it's not an issue, time to get those ski's out of the basement!

No point waiting...can't hurt to check it out. Chester Lake area including Black Prince area, Highwood pass, Rogers Pass, Parkway, Sunshine area ect ect are all in stellar conditions. We're hitting up stuff like no tommorrow and it's paying off every time. The alpine has been totally hammered by some extremely strong wind and plenty of slab out there, but if you know where to look the skiing / riding can be fantastic.

Sigh...

Still waiting for snow around Edmonton. Everybody seems to have some except us!

Got out on Sunday in Highwood Pass area before the road closed. Almost no snow until about 2000m then it's quite good. Anything facing west had the snow blown to Saskatchewan but North/East facing slopes were stellar. Wind effect slab on some aspects but boot deep powder was to be had by all.

I was in Warspite Cirque this weekend, and it looks like there wasn't any new snow in the week since last. Only about 30cm of snow along the interpretive trail, with larger drifts at warspite lake. We were on a short snowshoe trip, but were told that there is a good bit more snow in the glades above, and the snowboarding was good.

Rachelo...what? You didn't summit Warspite???

I did East Peak of Wendell + Yamnuska on Saturday...only patches of snow here and there (mostly on the backside of Yam). But that's quite likely old news considering the last bit of snow Calgary got...

Also, I experienced a first in my scrambling career...I literally got knocked off my feet by the wind while on the backside of Yam. At times, each step was like stepping into a fast moving stream. Makes me wonder if it was like the wind that Mtnview experienced on Bryant.

There's been lots of snow, it's just been blown to hell by some pretty fierce winds.

Skied all weekend with my family at Marmot Basin in Jasper. Exceptional snow everywhere we skied, below the Knob Chair base. Highway 16 was outstanding and all the blue runs skier's left of the Knob base were terrific. A couple runs weren't groomed, and the first trips down in the morning were great, but they got skied out pretty fast. We early birds got the goods though!

We didn't ski Eagle's Ridge, but some of my chums did, and said it was pretty good.

The new high speed chair is awesome, but my legs sure noticed! More skiing! Yay!

Oh, and Marmot has raised the price. Youch.

Why, yes I did summit Warspite. Just didn't bother mentioning. I mean... uh, no.. Hells no.

It was just a little 5km intro snowshoe trip. I mean, we thought about summitting it, but then it would have been too difficult to decide whether to continue north to Smith-Dorrien, or south to Indefatigable.... So we decided to leave it for another day...


Warspite Cirque is the cirque with Warspite Lake in it. The 'Black Prince Cirque Interpretive Trail' leads to it, but that is very poorly named, since Black Prince Cirque, containing the Black Prince Tarns is actually the next cirque above it - right under Mount Black Prince, and Mount Warspite. So I stick with the logical name of Warspite Cirque for what surrounds Warspite Lake.
Here's a picture that should detail out the area:

We just went to the lake, but met Kelrod along the way who had been snowboarding the glades and mentioned the snow was good.


T2C,
Had there really been snow during the week all through the spray valley? I'd been higher up at the Burstall/Chester area the week before, so my comparisons aren't exact, but Black Prince really didn't seem to have anything. When we were in the trees, it was all crusted stuff, and not very deep, and nothing hanging out on the trees as well. I guess it might have fallen on the trees, and just been blown a few ranges over without touching the ground. There was drifted evidence of some strong wind at Warspite Lake, but the trees were calm. Possible the snow just didn't make it down there?