Manitoba

We toured up Manitoba to 3,200' on a New Year's Day quest to look for buried weak layers and see how large the wind slabs were that formed over the past few days. We started seeing wind loaded slopes with 4 to 6" of snow on them. As we toured further up these increased to around 10" turning into hard wind slabs near the ridge. Most of Manitoba's face had been loaded with soft or hard wind slabs. We found a layer of buried surface hoar around 1" deep from 2,000' until we reached 3,100'. Our pit at 3,100' did produce concerning results on a layer of upright surface hoar buried around 1.5' deep. This was the most concerning layer we saw. We are not sure how widespread of a problem this layer is but we decided to stick to slopes that were not steep enough to slide.

We dug 2 pits, one at 2,500' the other at 3,100'. The pit at 2,500' (HS 113cm) had several crusts and produced a concerning result about 1.5' deep  on a layer of facets (ECTP25 down 40cm). This layer was underneath a stout crust. We did not see basal facets at the ground in this pit. In our pit at 3,100' (HS 180cm) we had concerning results on a layer of buried surface hoar that was upright (ECTP24 and ECTP28 down 40cm). This was the most concerning layer we saw today. This pit also had a thin crust just below the buried surface hoar. We did not dig to the ground.