I've been working out of Burnie Glacier Chalet for the past 11 days. I
arrived with the first wave of the recent storm, which over the week
dumped about a meter of storm snow on the area. Epic powder skiing
throughout the entire storm, with very little wind overall and only
surface instabilities to be concerned about which never amounted to
much. Throughout the storm we were able to ski very steep tree runs
and moderately steep alpine runs with confidence.
We are now into a period of good stability here. Stability tests
ranging from aggressive ski cutting to test profiles over the past
couple of days have shown a well settled snowpack without significant
layers of concern. The melt freeze crust from last month's warm period
is down about a meter now except in shallow wind exposed areas, where
it could still be a problem along with the deeper basal facets from an
overall thinner than usual snowpack (total snowpack depth is 180 cm at
1000 m elevation, which is down about 35% from the normal range in
this big snow area).
The ski quality today was excellent on S to E facing slopes from
mountain top to valley bottom and we were able to ski aggressive lines
lines up to the low 40 degree range.
Tom
--
Tom Wolfe
Mountain Guide ACMG/IFMGA
www.sawback.com
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