[wolfs]

Snowboard trip to the Prow, an excellent summit-thats-not-a-summit. Snow on the designated Glacier Basin trail starts about a mile from the end. Unless you get there early it will be a slooshy wallow in this snow which can be 1-2 feet deep out of the tracks. Not many wild flowers yet just stray lupines and trillium. The camps at the Basin were not all the way melted out but you could quickly clear any one that you chose with a shovel, just a foot or so of snow again. The Basin higher (Ruth St Elmos) featured several spring avalanche paths. On the way down from Ruth I set one of these off myself and was amazed at how slowly it moved. Not only could you have outskied this avalanche, you could have outwalked it and perhaps outcrawled it! Probably .5 mph, with a sound kind of like a constant light surf. If you're interested in conditions on the glacier and Ruth see my report on turns-all-year. It was a fun day despite conditions being very soft and grabby.