Observation: Cardiac Ridge

Not a whole lot of action from the storm in Upper Cardiac, mostly new snow slides, in the bowl and the ridge, we didn’t note any other activity down canyon on our tour out to BCC. Took a look at the crown of the slide on the Ridge it appeared to be new snow only from a large wind load up in the chute it ran on the same October crust that the larger avalanche from two weeks ago ran on, thus it was a repeater. It’s kind of discouraging that the October crust with weak facets under it is still lurking as a bed surface. There’s not enough of load on it now but in my opinion it’s still possible that a big load could overload and collapse the crust creating a very large avalanche. In the mean time there’s about a foot of snow sitting on a old bed surface, that has the potential to facet and create another repeater next storm. Things seemed mostly stable today, tickled a N facing line into Cardiff that I’ve been steering clear of because it hasn’t avalanched yet, it still has poor snow pack structure but seems unreactive at this point in time. Most all the big lines in Cardiac had been skied by days in. There was some wet activity on the SE facing portion of the ridge but mostly just roller balls.

photos: wet activity on the Ridge, and a good strategy on using old avalanche paths as a safe ascent route

The snow was definitely denser than what I was seeing yesterday on lower and more protected terrain. Wind slabs were forming in the afternoon on the E facing, steep S facing was getting damp and will be crusted in the AM