Steep Creek Area

We skied out in the Steep Creek area and found excellent snow in sheltered terrain. As we approached ridgeline, 20-25cm of low-density gold slowly stiffened up into soft, then hard slabs. Stepping off the skin track at ridgeline resulted in short shooting cracks and easy release of a 10cm slab (picture 1,2). The slab in picture 3 was on a W aspect at 2150m and ran easy on soft snow, but was stopped by some small trees in about 10m. We did get a small sz 1 to travel most of a steeper 200m gulley (W aspect at about 2100m) and saw a small sz 1 natural below some rocks at about the same elevation later in the afternoon. I probed between 165cm-220cm of snow at about 2000m on a N aspect (about 100m below the ridge).