Snowpack & Conditions Report - 251103

Snowpack & avalanche Conditions Report

Bow Summit and the 93N - 251103

Welcome to the start of the 2025/2026 winter season! Snow has begun to fall, ice is forming, and the usual seasonal flood of ski movies and stoke reels is in full swing. But the big question remains: is it really winter yet?

A team of our guides headed out to Bow Summit today along the Icefields Parkway (Highway 93N) to take the pulse of this young season and see how things are shaping up.

With it still being early November, Avalanche Canada has not yet begun issuing daily forecasts, and formal observations remain few and far between. In their absence, social media hype, hearsay, and hyperbole tend to fill the gap, often without telling the full story.

Our goal is to help reduce that uncertainty. Below you'll find some of the observations we gathered today in the field, along with imagery from other key venues in the area to assist in painting a clearer picture of the current state of the backcountry.

WHAT WE FOUND

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bow Summit was our target venue today. For many early-season backcountry skiers in the Bow Valley, it's often the first pilgrimage of the season and for a good reason! 

Bow Summit offers easy access, a high trailhead elevation, and sits conveniently on the west side of the highway. These factors make it one of the more reliable zones for early snow coverage and quick assessment windows when conditions are still evolving. 

Once on site, we followed the standard Bow Summit approach. It was immediately clear that winter had at least started to show up. Roughly 35cm of dry, low-density snow covered the road leading to the upper summer parking lot, making for a pleasant reintroduction to trail breaking. As we gained elevation, snow depths increased accordingly, and we consistently found between 50-80cm of snow at tree line. 

Our crew, admittedly pessimistic at the outset, was pleasantly surprised by what we found. Many of the classic early season features appear to be filling in reasonably well, and we found ourselves shifting from skeptical to cautiously hopeful.

That said, snow depth by itself is only part of the equation, and it needs to be considered in the context of the time of year. While some terrain is holding snow, that doesn’t necessarily mean it's ready to ride. A supportive base is still lacking, and many other features have been stripped bare by wind. Where snow does exist, small trees and rocks are often poking through—or poorly hidden just below the surface.

Looking up at Bow Summit from the summer trail

AVALANCHE OBSERVATIONS

During todays outing, visibility as a whole was fairly limited due to low light, however, the team did notice one natural avalanche (Size 1.5) on Bow Summit's North Shoulder, which had occurred in one of the earlier storm cycles. This goes to show that despite juvenile conditions, avalanches are still possible. 

If there's enough snow to ride, there's enough to slide!