Climbed by: me, MarkL.
This was a late-season show-shoeing trip, with a bit of avalanche transceiver practice thrown in. I'd only showshoed a couple times before in my life, and never attempted transceiver-location (which ended up being less intuitive than I would have thought!).
We parked at the Burstall Pass parking lot along the Smith-Dorrien, donned our 'shoes, and set off to the bowl close to the parking lot where there are several pre-buried avalanche transceivers controlled by a central control panel. I was impressed to find such a setup so close to the parking lot, yet seemingly undamaged.
After running around with a transceiver in "locate" mode, poking holes in hard snow with an avalanche probe, I felt reasonably sure I could locate someone before spring thaw, if not before he or she died. Clearly, more practice is in my future!!
Next, we carried on up French Creek, with our destination being the glacier. We ended up running out of time before making it all the way there, but did manage to get some photos of avalanche slopes (Mark had just completed an avalanche awareness course, and was having fun identifying areas that would be dangerous to walk under -- this turned out to be most places!). Also, one fearless ptarmigan was unable to resist the call of my camera's lens.
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