[MCR] March 15-19 Asulkan Hut area

A few days delayed but potentially useful for folks heading to the pass, wondering what was under the new storm snow.

Assisted Deryl Kelly with an ACC ski touring group for 5 days from Asulkan Hut. Coming in along the creek was the adventure you would expect with less than a meter of bullet proof snow at the trailhead, sloping refrozen track, open creek the entire way, and some use of ski crampons very nice to have to stay dry. The tree triangle had a 275cm snowpack at 2000m which is where we noted our first whumpf in a heavily skied regroup area on our way up to the hut. We had numerous subsequent whumpfs in the mounded moraines below the Cleaver, along with some cracking, but no releases from this layer. In our test pits we mainly found resistant planar shears, down 20-30cm, 50-60cm and at 110cm with a notable exception in the 2 test pits we dug below the headwall on Young's peak on Northerly aspects at 2400m and 2500m. In those locations we had moderate to hard sudden planar shears down 20cm and an RB4 result on what appeared to be small preserved surface hoar and stellars. The failure didn't propagate on an extended column test but along with the windslab avalanche activity to size 2 on north aspects we chose to not expose our group to the headwall despite the tracks from folks that did ski it. One other interesting find was a moderate sudden planar hand shear on well preserved graupel on the steep glacier basin of the approach to Saphire col (2400m) down 40cm, again on a North aspect. Glaciers had at least 300cm of snow for both Saphire and Asulkan, and other than the large open crevasses that were easily seen, we didn't observe any sagging. Skiing was pleasant but not remarkable down to the melt freeze crust at 1900m, with snow falling encouragingly on our ski out on the 19th.

 

Landon Shepherd ASG

 

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