We skied Black prince today, Tuesday Nov.19th.
Too much snow on the road to go to the Highwood....flowing over the hood of
our car!
Observations from Black Prince:
1) The foot bridge over the creek is gone(june floods). There are a few
logs over the creek just before the missing bridge, that will get you over
the creek.
2) The canyon below the Black Prince 'tree cone' has gotten deeper/steeper
from the floods with more downed trees in it. We elected to ride a bench to
the climbers left of the canyon so we were not in the terrain trap.
Snow: 33cm of new snow in the parking lot (1750m). 45cm of new snow at
2250m (our high point) Total snowpack depth of 95cm at 2250m. The snowpack
at 2200m on a SE aspect was 45cm of storm snow over 30cm of previous storm
snow over a melt freeze crust over 20cm of moist facets. the snowpack was
basically all unconsolidated and all low density. no slabs were observed.
the snowpack was collapsing on the base facets while trail breaking.
Weather: No wind was observed today (while skiing); not a breath, save a
light (not moving snow) breeze at our high point. When we drove past King
creek at 14:00 there were drifts all over the road from NW winds. It was
snowing 1-2cm/hour until 1pm when it tapered off.
Avalanche activity: we heard one avalanche off the blackprince headwall, but
could not see it.
Trail breaking was a good stiff challenge with ski pen ranging from 45-65cm
The main take home message is that here is a massive amount of snow
available for wind transport and it will be a scary place when the wind
comes and forms slabs.
So happy that winter is here!
Neil Warren
Ski Guide
CAA Professional Member
www.neilwarrenskiguiding.com
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