The rotten tooth

06doas , Monday 17th February, 2025 11:15PM

Been out and about in dogtooth range these past couple of days, the Skiing is good but the bottom is rotten! Mostly Ive been skiing south facing slopes between 1700-2400m, the sun has been and was again super strong, luckily the colder temps seemed to have stopped a crust forming, today felt real warm but skiing was still light and dry! The top 20-30cms is fist with the crust beneath seemly mostly supportive to skier traffic. Beneath the crust it’s a consistent degradation from facets down to DH through the lower pack. Braking trail is tough, punching through the crust and often sinking in sugar back the two steps you just gained. Plenty of natural evidence out of steep rocky north facing terrain, mostly sz1, some possibly stretching to sz2 from the previous cycle before the 4 cents we got yesterday. Two notable slides that hadn’t slid when I was out on Saturday, again from steep north facing terrain. No major instabilities noted on both days on the aspects we skied. Glad the colds gone and snows on the way!