PowPow @ PowCow

Good trip up Little Sand Creek today, despite the icy-melty-puddley-muddy approach from the staging area on the Bull FSR. The day was calm with a high temp (up in the terrain) of -2, overcast all morning, sunny in the afternoon. Once up to treeline, we found 20 cm of light dry overnight snow added to the 5 cm from yesterday. The new snow has a reasonable bond to the old surfaces (which include a 5cm sun-crust on solar aspects), although we did see some Dry Loose avalanches out of high, steep, rocky terrain on the back of the Lizard Range. Digging on a North West aspect at 1950 m, we found the ‘January drought’ interface of buried surface hoar and facet crystals 100 cm down in a deep snowpack area, and did some snowpack tests. No results in Compression or Extended Column tests, but we had a hard, resistant result on the January layer in a Deep Tap Test. With our observations and tests, were happy to ski moderate angle terrain in the deep snowpack area where we were, but decided to stay away from thinner, shallower, or rocky areas where we might have triggered a thin-to-thick release on the Persistant Weak Layer we’ve seen discussed in the avalanche forecast. (take a look at ‘Thin Spot’ and ‘Shallow Rocky Start Zone’ at avalanche.ca/glossary).