Highwood Ridge Fan and Couloir

<p>I’m still trying to get better at writing these so bear with me. We skied the NW aspect Highwood Ridge fans and found some great skiing next to all of the previous tracks. Slight wind affected surface snow with crust in only a couple of turns. Stability on the slope felt great so we ventured higher. We skinned a fair way up the couloir in the picture twice. Once lower and once higher up. We found: overall stability to be good. At a varying depth 10-20cm down there was a layer that the untouched snow liked to slide on. I dug multiple hand pits and found that some chunks would easily slide, and some would not. I tried a simple compression test with my shovel blade on a hand pit and it would collapse around CTE 3 but wouldn’t slide unless I pushed it (40° slope, I measured). Sometimes it would be somewhat easy to slide the block, other times it would slide but crumble. Jumping and ski cutting did absolutely nothing, even on 40° slopes</p>

Terrain Ridden

Alpine slopes, Steep slopes.

Terrain Avoided

Sunny slopes, Convex slopes.

Snow Conditions

Powder.

Weather Conditions

Cold.