For the final trip of 2007 we decided to head out to the Bartlet Mountain, in particular the north-west bowl which is access via a narrow and steep couloir. The avalanche risk was announced as considerable - given the good base and the little snow - maybe 10cm at 2000 meters this seemed a little surprising but there was a strong wind from the north to north - east which wind transport clearly evident.

The accumulations were regularly purging into the bowl we were climbing.

Snow was varied. Slabby on south to west slopes we traversed. We noticed graupel at 1900 meters then a mix of soft and hard slabs. The soft slabs were sitting on a hard crust which was a good sliding surface. We didn’t approach the side of the bowl with the purges but there were some large accumulations.

Luc enjoyed his telemark skis.

and Anny found snow to her taste although there was some avalanche debris underneath

The crux couloir is around 40 degrees, we had to climb this on foot as the fresh snow was just sliding off the hard base. I was last down and managed to purge the whole couloir riding the wave to the bottom, lucky I had radioed down to Luc to ask him and Anny to get out of the fall line. I was surprised at the power of the flow given that it was only the top 15cm of snow.

So the Considerable risk was well merited even if the slabs we found were not too deep… a large face with a terrain trap could be nasty. As just a quick note we changed out initial object and chose this route while climbing as it was the slope least in the lee of the wind.