Soft and hard snow and sluff slide

olivier.clements , Sunday 7th April, 2024 6:10PM

We skinned up the Big Kahuna around lunch to about 1500m, then headed over to Fraser chutes for a quick final lap. A great little day! On our skin up the big Kahuna, we saw a lot of wind transport happening at the ridge line. We found boot top, light fluffy powder covering the entire face, but it was overtop a very hard surface. This made skinning a little challenging, as the new snow didn't provide good support and often our skis would struggle to get edge grip. Visibility was pretty poor/flat. We didn't notice any snow quality change from the bottom to 1500m. After our lap on the big Kahuna, we headed over to Fraser chutes for another run. Looking back, we notice a loose dry avalanche had released from the rocks and had covered a lower section of our ski tracks. It must have happened between 1 and 2pm (see the images). Our lap down the Fraser chutes was very wind scoured and hard, but overlaid with nice soft snow lower down in the trees.

Loose dry/sluff avalanche that seem to result from wind loading up high.