Pulpit 2

Pulpits are the flavor of the month it seems despite the long skin it takes to get to any half-decent skiing. The more open stuff of pulpit 1 was already looking skied out, and there were at least 15 people about to ski it behind us, so I wouldn't bother anymore with it until we get a lot more snow. We had a good time skiing the dense trees instead, and did an exploratory mission to get around over the saddle of pulpit 2. There was not enough coverage yet, (don't follow our tracks) so we aborted that mission and settled for a ski down the avy path of pulpit 2. It was good but see the avalanche report (size 1 skier triggered) - it can get bad fast. Looking forward to the gullies of 1 and 2 filling in a bit more to get some good yo-yo laps later season! For now, stay warm out there folks!!

East aspect of pulpit 2 (see photos for terrain). Note this was an obvious avalanche path to begin with (flagging trees etc observed). Made a turn and started to see the snow above me running down from my last cut so darted into the trees to watch the outcome, described in this report. 20/20 hindsight should have snapped a photo of it once it stopped. Seems mostly just sluffing of the surface snow, but easily could trigger a weak layer if it was worse out there and if it kept going. Stay safe out there!

110cm total depth. West side of Pulpit 2. We dug our pit here to ensure we were safe to skin up to the ridge. Long day, tried to get around to the other side of pulpit 2 past the saddle but unfortunately there is not enough snow coverage in the last 500 or so metres of that traverse :( Fluffy powder on top 40cm that transitions to a consolidated layer. This aspect doesn't have the significant wind or sun effects from the season so far. The consolidation quickly changes to that expected depth hoar that is present from 65cm depth to the ground and gets super facety in that last 10cm before the ground. Extended column test had a break in the powder to consolidation at 35cm that did not propagate at E3. A small fracture that again didn't propagate or drop between consolidation and hoar at 65cm depth at E7. At A3 we made that drop. Still no propagation. After those tests it would have been tempting to ski the west face, but there are still lots of thinly veiled sharks near the gully and it would be a pain to skin out from there so late in the day (and we all know pulpits is a long day of skinning to begin with...), so we went down the east face. No formal tests were done on that side, just took it safe and easy. That being said, did trigger a small size 1 there, see attached report.