Hey there,
Had another great day on the skis today, this time in and above the West Nile Trees on Bow Peak. Over all ski quality was great and the snowpack seemed well settled and supportive. Almost no wind effect, below 2200m. Above that we found plenty of variation in snow depth and obvious cross loading of the rolling rib features up there. We did dig on a few features where I would have expected to see a few results in our stability tests - a few broken shears in the windslabs in the upper 30cm's, all of which were in the lower end of the hard range in the tests, as well as one very resistant planar shear down 50cm's in the upper end of the hard range. Temps for most of the day hung around the -15*C mark.
One interesting result we did see was on the Nov 6 crust. Definitely seems like an isolated result, and probably pretty specific to this area, but on two different cross loaded lee features we were able to get the test column to fail on the crust and slide of 1/3 of the way off the block. We only saw the result on the last couple hits in the tests (CTH29/30), and with at least 1meter of well settled, hard snow overtop of the layer (in our pits anyways), it seems unlikely it could be human triggered.
It did make me start paying closer attention to the where the shallow spots were up there and what was over my head, in terms of potentially bigger loads impacting the slopes below. There is some cornice hazard from the ridge overhead, but for the time being they still look pretty small.
Coverage was good below treeline and we got great turns all the way back down to valley bottom. The creek crossings in and out are easy to manage without soaking your skins or having to take off your skis which was nice.
All in all a beautiful, bluebird day of touring up there, and lot's of fresh lines left to play on.
Have fun out there!
Mike Trehearne
Alpine Guide & Apprentice Ski Guide
Cloud Nine Guides