Spent the last six days at the pass with Tom Wolfe and three clients.
Enjoyed excellent skiing on uncrowded mountains.
WEATHER : Quite stable the whole time. Cool temps, skies broken or
scattered with the odd piece of clag, no significant winds. Total Hn for
the week about 15cm.
SNOWPACK : The surface is currently low density fluff on Northwest
through East aspects, and breakable, no-fun suncrust on South and West
to 2500m. Southeast slopes above treeline have a soft, skiable suncrust.
Isolated areas in Alpine have a buried 15cm thick old windslab under the
new snow, not reactive to skis. Height of snow is about 230 cm at
treeline and on the glaciers we weren't hitting bottom with a 320 cm
probe. Mid and lower pack gets progressively harder and is strong...
... except for "you know what": much evidence of previous cycle of
Naturals and Skier accidentals on the Feb 4th surface hoar below 1700m,
especially in the 1400m and below elevations. This layer was evident to
us in pits 1750m and below on N and E. It would produce generally Hard
sudden planar (fast and clean "like a cash register") results, down
50ish at the really low elevations and down about 90 at 1700m. Our
latest pit, yesterday (March 1st), was on a lower fan of Cheops just
downstream of "The Cone" moraine. We dug at 1500m, North, and the layer
was about 1cm thick, composed of well preserved surface hoar 6 - 12mm,
sandwiched between pencil snow down 80cm. Yikes.
SKIING: Excellent skiing, good stability up high. Boot top powder on the
Lily, Dome, Youngs, Bonney, and Balu with cold smoke contrails. 8812
bowl (SE) was good yesterday (March 1st). Illecillewaet is wind affected
on skier's left, but Lookout col N slopes and Perley Rock are good.
Pretty easy trail breaking, ski pens 10 -25cm. We skied steep terrain
with confidence to about 1900m, then more carefully below that, and
avoided altogether the steep, protected low elevation stuff due to our
concerns about the Feb. 4 surface hoar instability.
Cheers, Joel McBurney SG
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