Special K3

axcooper , Saturday 14th December, 2024 9:15PM

We went for a nice ski tour up at K3 while people were doing sled laps nearby. Fortunately, we had our zone to ourselves. We skied up and down a SW aspect above the lodge and enjoyed some great powder in the open burn. Winds were moderate from the SW at ridge top, with some strong gusts. The snow on the ridge was very wind effected and even styrofoamy in spots. I imagine there was significant wind loading on the other side of the ridge (east/southeast aspect), but we weren't going that way and didn't investigate. Once we dropped into our run, we enjoyed some really nice powder. Riding quality was somewhere between "good" and "amazing", but I downgraded to "good" because I have high standards. No signs of instability were noticed during the day. We decided to dig a pit for practice halfway down our second lap. Our pit was at 1800m, where we measured 140 cm of snow. There was a noticeable crust about 40 cm down, another 55 cm down, and one more 100 cm deep. We got a resistant, hard result on a compression test on that 40 cm crust. Our extended column test resulted in nothing. The snow was nice and light in the top 50 cm, then got progressively harder below that. Just want you want to see. Note that this pit definitely would have failed the CAA Avalanche Operations Level 1 course, so take it as one minor bit of information. Wildlife sightings included a moose and a flock of white ptarmigans.