Cornice Ridge

<p>Travelled along the summer trail up to Cornice Ridge with my students. Strong solar effect today, with notice of trees shredding, pin wheeling on solars and a sun crust developed on solars as well. Dug a pit right off the ridge on East aspect @1860m on 20 degree slope. Had some alarming results. My first compression test failed when isolating the column, using my saw and cutting the back of the block, failed on the surface hoar/ facets down 80cms, with the size of the surface hoar being up to 24mm. Giving me a very easy hardness, sudden collapse result. Performed another column test and the same result again. Did a third one and was able to get a result on the surface hoar layer that’s 40cm down with the size of surface hoar being around 8mm. Had a broken result on that with Easy hardness. And then had an easy result sudden collapse 80cm down of the SH layer. Also did an extended column test. It propagated across the entire column on the 18th loading tap, producing a moderate result. This layer that’s 80cm down now has a slab over it. Lots of caution!!!!</p>

Terrain Ridden

Dense trees, Mellow slopes.

Terrain Avoided

Alpine slopes, Convex slopes, Open trees, Steep slopes.

Avalanche Conditions

Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.

Rapid temperature rise to near zero degrees or wet surface snow.

Snow Conditions

Crusty, Deep powder.

Weather Conditions

Sunny, Warm.