Sugar Cube

Skied sugar cube couloir. Appproached up and over crystal ridge. We found 3cm of new snow on the skin track in the trees, and 20-30cm of ski penetration trail breaking above tree line. We managed to skin to within 20m of the ridgetop before being forced to take our skis off and bootpack due to lack of snow on the ridge. Some of the lower sections of crystal ridge frontside looked like good skiing, but near the ridge crest most areas were quite rocky. We rappeled a skinny, steep little gully into the upper snowfield. A 30m rope was just long enough to get through the choke. In the upper snowfield we found 20cm of soft, unconsolidated snow (fist) over a stiffer midpack, with some sharks poking through. The lower couloir was much the same, but snow depth decreased rapidly in the fan, where we had to ski carefully to avoid rocks lurking below the surface. We thought about going back up the summit run, but everything else on the slope looked too rocky to be worth a second lap so we toured across the meadows to the little bump above Helen lake, and enjoyed some decent skiing wiht no rocks from there down through the meadows into the creek. From the creek we skinned back up over helen shoulder and skied out to the road. The skiing on the front side of helen shoulder was mediocre, but the backside where we were touring up looked pretty good.

The day was overcast, with light West to South winds. Light (s-1) snow started around 1300 and continued for the rest of our day.