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See the Brutal Condition of the Bugaboo/Snowpatch Col Last Summer

While there's still a lot of snow in the Bugaboos as of this week, the season for alpine rock in the provincial park is quickly approaching

The Bugaboos in B.C. are a busy place during the summer as many climbers traverse the glaciers to access the world-famous alpine granite spires. One of the biggest issues with the Bugaboos in August is the main access to many of the routes is the Bugaboo/Snowpatch col between Bugaboo and Snowpatch spires.

Over the past few years, the rate of change of the glaciers is faster than five or 10 years ago. This has caused challenges to major access points, including cols and moraines that have become very unstable because of the rate of melting. There have been a lot of accidents and close calls over the last couple of summers.

Last summer, Luka Bogdanovic and Oliver Thorne visited the Bugaboos for some climbing. Thorne took the below video that Bogdanovic sent us showing the extent of rockfall and the brutal conditions the col is in this summer. “Thorne took it as we went for a walk across Crescent Glacier Sunday evening,” said Bogdanovic.

“Most of our plans got rained out, so we just took advantage of the couple of hours of clear weather we had that evening to take a closer look at the col.” When asked how busy the park was, he said, “Absolutely dead while we were up there, but we were there during the worst weather window of the summer since we had the hut booked months in advance. There were four tents at Applebee Dome on Sunday, so less than a dozen or so people in the entire park basically.”

Bugaboo/Snowpatch Col 2021

 

 

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