Sunscreen and Smiles

Comments added to the pictures. Given the high rating we were hesitantly lured into the backcountry by the glorious sunshine and fantastic views. We monitored the rain crust(s) as we went and were poking around for windslabs. The snowpack is generally quite wet at treeline (top of tee) and dries quickly above that. The rain "crust sandwich" was interesting and quite variable in composition, thickness and strength. Something we will monitor over the weekend as the next pulse of snow approaches to help assess future supportiveness. Lots of surface hoar from valley bottom to alpine so will be keeping an eye on that to see how it develops/evolves with any wind or sun to come ahead of the next snow.

With the great visibility we saw many old slides, scroll through the pics, hopefully the resolution is decent. Old wet slides and newer dry loose and dry slabs. No reactivity witnessed from all the skiing we did or from tracks we saw. Just sluff running when slopes got steep.

No wind, very sunny with a few high clouds. Some surface clouds in the morning (cleared up quickly) and increasing again at the end of the day. Was very foggy on the highway back to Terrace and in town.

At treeline and above there was 15'ish cm of light snow above a variable crust. There is a significant crust further down but within the top 1m. We mostly monitored the upper crust/crust sandwich as it varied in composition and supportivness as we progressed. Minimal wind slabs were found and those were soft, thin and right at ridgelines. In general, skiing did not penetrate/collapse the upper crust layer.