A group of us were climbing in Banff this past week. Actually, I was driving up the Icefield Parkway past Mount Wilson Friday morning as the helicopter was flying to the site.
In the Calgary paper, an avalanche expert said that one of the contributing causes was a temperature inversion on Thursday. The temps at the base were 15 F while higher up on the mountain they approached 32 F. Both Wednesday and Thursday were sunny in the area.
Terrible accident.