[MCR] Howsons 15 Dec 08

Subject: [MCR] Howsons 15 Dec 08
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:48:19 -0800
Today we shovelled out the lodge and got it ready for the season. There are 140 cm of snow at the lodge (1030 m). At 1470 m on the Solitaire Meadows, there are 260 cm of snow. We dug a test pit and found moist snow at 0 degrees 130 cm down. The air temperature was -18 and the snow surface -22. There are many crusts embedded in the moist snow, but we only found shears in the upper layers. There has been some reverse loading out of the E the last few days and we saw a few size 2 avalanches that had run on W aspects. Otherwise, there was older debris from the rain event last week and one size 2 on a steep rocky south aspect. Ski cutting of steep and often windloaded pockets had very small results. We think the stability is fair in the alpine and good below, but our observations are still limited.

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Christoph Dietzfelbinger
IFMGA/ UIAGM Mountain Guide - Bear Mountaineering and the Burnie Glacier Chalet
Box 4222        Smithers, B.C.          V0J 2N0 Canada
tel. 250-847-3351/ fax 250-847-2854 info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx www.bearmountaineering.ca

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