Distance

24.5 km total

Elevation

no info yet

Vertical

1,650 m gain

Time

10 hr 0 min total

Mt Andromeda Ski (S ridge) - May 11 2019. 1650m gain 24.5km. 10 hours round trip. Currently you must walk from the far parking lot. Accessing the glacier toe was straightforward, no rivers yet. We had an excellent overnight freeze because of the clear sky! Temps were above zero until we gained the headwall. The coverage on the Athabasca Glacier was great, it's definitely better than it was last year at this time. We took the icefall route to avoid the Snow Dome seracs and it was filled in very well, there is no reason to risk the seracs at this time (it dumped twice on our trip up the icefall, and the Andromeda serac did once too - all in the dark!). Found melt-freeze conditions until about 2800m on our route - dry snow from there for the most part (some crusts on the south ridge but not quite full melt freeze yet). We bootpacked up most of the ridge since it was quite firm. The ski down from Andromeda was quite nice, although we were too early to enjoy corn snow until we reached the headwall again. Some natural slides ran onto the skin track during the day. We only saw a total of 7 other people on the entire Columbia today, strange considering the weather - on a Saturday, too. Not complaining though!

Route name

Mount Andromeda 24.1 km route

out-and-back
Obstacles

routefinding, snow on route, avalanche danger, crevasse danger

Key gear

skis