Burstall Pass

The ski season started with a bang in early November with a large dump of snow. However, since then, we've had a bit of a drought, and Kananaskis Country hadn't seen any appreciable snow in almost 2 weeks. Conditions were thin everywhere, but we were desperate, so we went to the place most likely to have some powder - Burstall Pass.

Busy day at Burstall parking lot.

Apparently, we were not alone in our thinking. The parking lot was quite packed by the time we got there. We saw the usual assortment of snowshoers and skiers, and we even saw a couple of ice fishermen.

Skiing over Burstall Lakes, with Whistling Rock Ridge in the background.

Even though there wasn't much snow in the lower sections of the trail, the weather was beautiful with perfectly blue skies and an interesting temperature inversion which made the higher elevations warmer than the parking lot.

On top of Burstall Pass, with Snow Peak in the background to the right. Note the exposed rocks.

There were many exposed rocks on top of the pass, but the section between the pass and the gully was pretty good. There were some spots with super hard wind loaded slab, but overall the snow was quite soft, as Ray can attest to. The ski-out gully was quite questionable, but seemed like the safer option over skiing back down the trail up, as there were many exposed roots and rocks in the forest.

All in all, a decent day out with beautiful weather and marginal conditions. Hopefully, it will snow some more!