I spent the past several days in the Columbia Icefields area. Although I didn't get on any of the big name peaks I had a good look around and climbed Boundary Peak on Monday June 15.

There is a lot of winter snow left. At Parker's Ridge you can put your skis on at the road and the skiing looked pretty good.

Coverage and crevasse bridging on all the glaciers looked good for mid June. The Boundary Glacier seemed to have a bit of a thinner snowpack than other places but still looked ok. There was 2 - 2.5 m of snow at about 2700 m on Mt Athabasca's North Glacier. Travel on Monday was boot top in wet snow with firm snow beneath.

After last week's rain and snow there was a widespread wet-loose avalanche cycle to size 2 on the weekend off anything steep, including a skier triggered size 2 on the Silverhorn at mid-day on Saturday. This would have been a nasty business if anyone had been descending the far end of the Ramp on the North Glacier route, this avalanche would have hit them.

I saw groups on Mt Athabasca's North Glacier route, Silverhorn, and standard North Face. No evidence of anyone on Andromeda.

As most of us understand some of the classic alpine ice climbs in this area are now "historical" routes and only exist as seasonal snow climbs or mixed routes now. The "standard" N Face on Athabasca looks to have a significant amount of mixed snow and rock climbing even with this year's good snow coverage. You can still connect snow gullies to the upper snow face on the Skyladder. I didn't get a look into the North Bowl routes except the W Shoulder Direct, which seems to be snow on rock these days with little to no permanent ice left.