Cirque Glacier

nolan.haas.1998

We skied the N couloir of Cirque to access the Cirque glacier. Overall we observed less wind effect than anticipated, apart from the upper south ridge of cirque. The couloir had 25cm of lower density snow. The sides of the couloir had very soft slabs (less than sz 1) releasing as we skied down. We probed 230-290 on the glacier. We observed several Dry Loose avalanches (12-24hrs old) out of steep terrain at ridge top as we skied down the glacier. Once we wrapped around east ridge and headed back towards the south ridge, we heard several whumfs. We were avoiding steep, larger connected slopes with shallow start zones due to our uncertainty around the deeper instability’s in the snowpack.