[MCR] South Purcells

Hi,


I spent the weekend skiing in the Dewar Creek drainage in the very southern part of the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy.  Here's a summary of the conditions we found:


In the valley bottoms (~1500m) and on protected slopes below treeline the surface hoar layer buried on Jan 27 is prevalent and very prominent, but is only down about 15-20cm.  This overlying snow is quite faceted and has minimal slab properties.  This layer was failing and propagating in flat terrain, but interestingly it sounded more like glass tinkling than whumpfing because it is so shallow.


This surface hoar gets smaller with increasing elevation, while the amount of snow overlying it increases.  At treeline it was down about 30cm, but again the snow above did not show much in the way of slab development.  I couldn't get it to propagate as a slab when ski cutting steep rolls, instead the faceted surface snow would sluff down to the surface hoar layer.  At this elevation the total snowpack was a decent 190-200cm but it felt generally quite weak and facetted when probing around.


The surface hoar diminishes above treeline and is replaced by recently buried, faceted windslab.  There was a thin suncrust on most solar aspects at all elevations.  A few cm of recent convective storm snow made for surprisingly good ski quality higher up, and the older facetted surface lower down was also very good, as long you stayed off the sun exposed slopes.


The snow stability is good at all elevations for the time being, but this will change if we ever get a significant dump of snow, particularly at the lower elevations where the surface hoar is well preserved.


Jeff Volp

ACMG Ski Guide

Kimberley, BC

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