Stuckfest at Torpy

The snowpack was super variable today due to yesterday’s strong southwest wind. That created some tricky riding conditions, resulting in a lot of stucks for us. Yesterday’s rain has unfortunately created a nasty new crust that extends up to 1200m so if you want to ride powder you will have to get above that. We saw signs of several naturally triggered avalanches that occurred over the past 24-48 hrs up to size 2.5. In the first photo the fracture line is outlined in red while a adjacent glide crack is outlined in green. We couldn’t get near the fracture lines to investigate so we weren’t sure what weak layer they failed on but when we dug a quick pit (next to one of our stucks) we found a reactive layer under the recent wind pressed snow that was 35-45cm deep. We also found an old rain crust that was down 85cm at tree line and around 55cm down at lower elevations. We decided to give all the steep open slopes a miss for the next few days until the reactive new storm slab has a chance to bond.