Bow Falls Ice Climb

Looking for multipitch ice with little avalanche hazard, we climbed Bow Falls today. We were able to ski to a small slope on the right before doning crampons and scrambling up ice and rocks until beneath the first major ice cliff. We were prepared to belay across the snow slope beneath the ice cliff but were able to traverse left just above the slope by clearing out thick ice lenses and chopping an ice ledge. This led to two long, belayed ice/snow pitches diagonalling up left to avoid the main snow gully. Another two short WI4 pitches led to the top through enjoyable but challenging climbing with ice lenses. We didn't use the fixed rap station on the rock out left so we could rap hard climber’s right to avoid the snow gully. Three 50 m diagonal raps regained the traverse ledge we cut out of the ice on ascent. Another short downclimb led back to our skis. There was just enough new snow to cover the rocks on the ski out. There are some cornices on the far right and middle but nothing really threatening the climb. We observed some cracking in the snow at the base of the route when trying to ski higher and so took to crampons and ice over skis and snow.