Summit Creek

AST course at summit cr. Warm day above 0 although winds cool. A bit of fresh snow from the night before. Overnight freezing level about 900 metres. We observed small loose avalanches on all aspects around exposed rocks on our journey up. Significant isothermal conditions around trees and rocks made for cautious movements especially when we were off our skis. Ski conditions mix of a corn and crusty corn with pockets of powder on north aspects above 1400 m. On drive home we observed moderately large (2 - 2.5) fresh avalanche activity high up and mid slope on Halcyon on south facing slope. Highest avalanche was a slab release, one mid-slope was a loose avalanche that stepped down and others were loose snow avalanches. Close to the BC border loose avalanches were running to ground.

Our results on snow pack tests were not as consistent as they could have been due to different people doing them but here is a summary of what we observed. Dug a group pit at 1200 metres on a 23 degree east facing slope. Range of snow depth over the 175 m. wide profile was 150 to 180 cm. Density varied from 4Finger in the first 10 cms and then down to pencil all the way to fist density depth hoar with the exception of a 4 cm 4F layer down about 50 cms sandwiched within the pencil slab. Could not quite make out what it was but it looked to be decomposing facets. There was 80 plus cms of depth hoar at the bottom of the snow pack. Basically half the snow pack was a heavy wet dense wind slab and the other half was large wet facets... At the 150 cm side of the profile we got no results. As we moved into the deeper snow we got CTM3s (x3) on the depth hoar. Saw placement may have been partly responsible for those results. A Rb yielded no results. Of note is that the 30 cm x 30 cm x 100 cm (+-) compression test columns once failed and lying on the ground were immovable due to their weight... Overall I was a bit surprised at this low elevation to see the weak layers still so well defined in this very wet snow pack. The CT results on the depth hoar were a wee bit scary but no results at all on this layer on our stability test ( Rb ). We exceeded the Rb test with a triple person jump and still got no results. Our overall conclusion was that we were still in the realm of "extra caution" and that a heavy load in steeper terrain could wake up the depth hoar layer. We were happy to be in lower angle terrain and it appeared that is where most of the other skiers were as well as we observed lots of nice ski tracks on various slopes visible from the highway on the way home.