Mt Balfour - March 23, 24 2019. Made the summit of Mt Balfour in a day from Bow Lake. A 14 hour day with 2150m of elevation gain ending at Balfour hut for the night. We had great travel conditions and lucked out quite a bit with the weather - we had a solid overnight freeze (clear skies), super easy travel throughout the morning. Some clouds rolled in and kept the solar radiation minimal and the snow held up very well until late afternoon. High elevation temperatures were below freezing until about 3pm. The SW slope to gain the summit ridge was the only soft snow we had to deal with - the clouds inconveniently cleared on us for this section & baked that slope quickly while we were on it, we had to boot pack up since the wet surface was sliding on the sun crust - it was endless facets below this crust -considering the timing and heat it was at our "comfort" limit no doubt, even though a loose slide would have been pretty low consequence. Once on the ridge it was mostly smooth sailing although the solar input on the rocks made for a lot of post holing, and everywhere else the facets helped for that, ugh. The cornices were not very large and not many were overhanging, we only had to pull the probe out once. The crux section was pretty spicy but didn't hold us up for too long after I raked away gallons of facets. Pretty straightforward to the summit from there. Ski down from the summit ridge went well - that super sunny slope™ had already begun to re-freeze and skied quite well, our ski cuts did nothing exciting. The bootpack back up to the high col was torture at this point in the day. Ski down from the high col was great! What a run zipping below the seracs and through the crevasses. Balfour is definitely favorite of mine, such a fantastic position above the Wapta, with so many large peaks in view. A must do. Day 1 was 29km 2150m gain 14 hours from car to summit to hut. Car to summit time was 12 hours. Total trip was 44km 2700m gain in 18 hours. This would be harder than Mt Columbia for a 1 day car to car!