Better in the Alpine

Today we sledded into the Big Y for some skiing. With low danger we felt like “stepping out” into some larger alpine terrain. We were looking for evidence of wind slab, and while we found a lot of wind-affected snow, we didn’t find any deposits deeper than 10 cm. We saw a few small loose dry avalanches from steep, shady terrain, that were only 0.5 in size. Otherwise we didn’t see any new avalanches. We dug a profile at 1850 m and didn’t find anything concerning in the top metre of the snowpack. Total snow depth ranges from 70 cm to 200 cm. We found good skiing on alpine slopes, where there is 5 cm of soft snow on top of a supportive crust. At lower elevations this crust is breakable. The sledding was also pretty fun, breaking through the crust, and not bad travel at all up the creek.