I'm considering a ten day ice climbing trip to either Ouray or Hyalite, but with current weather was curious about avalanche risks. Most of my ice climbing experience is in in the NE (sticky snow, lots of vegetation), where think the risk is less than in the rockies. I was wondering if anyone here with experience in either location could offer their impression of risks.
The way it seems to me is that the ice park would be practically risk free, but that there would be no difference between risk in Hyalite Canyon vs. any back country location below tree line. I'm not familiar with the terrain in either area though.
I have no avalanche training so I'm looking to take reasonable precautions to stay safe, especially considering the a bleak advisory ( mtavalanche.com/current and avalanche.state.co.us/).
Currently Hyalite has obtained almost a foot of snow in the last 24hours and its still snowing off and on as of Dec25th the snow pack was near 36 inches. According to the local dawn patrol guys the avalanche danger is "considerable" on all slopes. How ever there are a few areas in Hyalite that never have much avy danger. But depending on how much you want to explore you may run out of lower elevation climbs.
You can climb plenty of ice in Hyalite without exposing yourself to avalanche terrain. Unnamed wall, lower Flanders, most of the Genesis area. Though if you do not know how to identify avalanche terrain and avoid it you should seek more in depth information. Hyalite would be much more of a wilderness than the Ice Park, depends what you are looking for!
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