NAK shoulder

Went for a chilly jaunt up NAK shoulder today. Quite windy, with wind transport happening on and off throught the morning. Snow in the trees lower down was still nice and fluffy. The higher we climbed the worse the wind effect was. The top third was survival skiing. The views at the top were great though.

Lots of pockets of hard wind slab in the top half, even in fairly sheltered areas. Ranging from only a few cm thick to as much as 30 cm in one of my hand shear tests. Everywhere I checked, these were sitting ontop of lower density snow. Generally unreactive to skier traffic except for a few very small pockets.