Forum Ridge Christmas Eve

Found decent coverage on the tour up Forum ridge today. There was a noticeable rain crust hurried 5-15cm down on the lower skin track but once we passed above that the snow was soft and fluffy. Little to no wind all day, bluebird conditions. There doesn’t seem to be any real wind effect or wind loading issues on the east side of forum except for right on top of the ridge. Riding was quite nice today.

Bluebird skies and a noticeable temperature inversion as we climbed from the car to the ridge

We performed 2 single column compression tests. Both results were similar, where we achieved a failure on the 4th and 6th tap from the elbow on the icy ground layer/crust. This fracture was uneven. This surprised us a little as we expected the persistent layer about 70cm down to fail first however that wasn’t the case today. The midpack above the persistent layer halfway down is quite nicely consolidated with approximately 15cm’s of new snow on top