Just don’t go…

Went to the backcountry today NOT to ski but to see the damage of the current weather situation. Avoided to make more turns than necessary on (or into) the breakable crust, which varied between 1-4 cm thickness. We dug a profile on a westerly slope in Southbowl to investigate the reactivity of the underlying snowpack. We got an ECTP18 down 40 cm on the January 11 low density powder, which was still present in form of decomposed snow and even some stellar like crystals. We got an ECTN28 in the remaining storm snow down 56 cms. We couldn’t trigger the Jan 2nd SH down 108 cms during the ECT, but when we tossed the column into the pit after the test it broke smooth and we found some SH crystals on the shear surface. Further down we found the Dec 16 crust in form of a decomposed crust sandwich with some variable grain forms in between. Altogether, skiing was pretty terrible and getting back to the slopes of RMR was quite relieving.