Crusty Helen

Great day on Helen Ridge with marginal skiing conditions with about 5-10cm over a supportive crust. Skied the burnt trees in the bowl, a few other groups chose bigger lines up by sitting bull. Alpine was wind blasted, conditions were better in the glades but still crusty. The bottom 1/4 of the ski out was not great- sketchy survival skiing. Helen Lake trailhead is probably a better move for this zone than parking on the road unless there’s a lot more snow.

Observed a size 1.5-2 dry loose avy across the valley coming off of crowfoot mountain.

The forecasted winds for the day never really materialized on the ridge. Started out cold and then warmed up about 6-7 degrees by noon. Afternoon clouds. Only a small amount of snow transport seen. It started to snow around 2pm and continued until we left the area at 3.

Dug a pit to ground at treeline just below the ridge on a south facing aspect. Not a ton of snow. 9cm of light fluffy snow sitting over a supportive sun/wind crust, then a ~7cm layer of 4-finger density snow, below that the entire snowpack was well consolidated finger density, except for the last 5-10cm of snow at ground which was depth hoar/sugar facets. Compression test moderate uneven break on 12th hit (from elbow) the sun/wind crust failed over the weaker low density snow, but no cohesive slab. The rest of the snowpack was bomber- couldn’t get it to budge, even hitting it as hard as I could. It seems the well consolidated mid-pack is bridging the deep sugar snow for now, but the crust overtop of dust is concerning for the future with more snow in the forecast. Also of note that this crust layer was occasionally cracking on the skin track and small whumphs were also happening occasionally. It didn’t seem overly unstable/unsafe with the amount of snow we were dealing with & the mid pack being solid, but with more snow load this would be a spicy layer.