Potential Persistent Slab Near Garibaldi Lake

<p>We poked around above Garibaldi Lake by the Burton Hut on Sunday morning. There was an okay but not great freeze at the hut - the crust was mostly supportive but you could sometimes punch through it in boots. This was the case when we arrived on Saturday afternoon as well, and I suspect that this crust (and the fact that temps were lower than forecast at this elevation) may have played into the fact that persistent slabs were not widespread through the region this weekend. It was sunny in the morning and we were hoping for some corn skiing, but the sun disappeared before 11am and things didn't soften up by the time we left. We planned to head up in the direction of the Bookworms, but a large slab avalanche (pictured) got us a bit spooked. We were more than a kilometer away so it's difficult to estimate crown height, but it appeared to be at least 1m deep (each member of our group of 4 independently estimated it between 1 and 2m). I had hoped that AvCan were being overly cautious with the DPS forecast, and that the rain had wiped out the early December layer, but the depth of this crown in a relatively thin zone combined with the fact that it occurred in a classic thin-to-thick rocky spot in the 1700-2100m range (we estimated this was at about ~1750m) led us to suspect that this was a persistent slab avalanche. It was tough to tell the age from so far away, but the crown line still looked quite sharp and new. There were numerous slides on the same face (including one in the picture on the left) that started higher up and ran further but with smaller crowns. These may have initially started as point releases/cornice failures up above, and the suspected persistent slab may have been triggered sympathetically, but it was hard to make out from a distance as the top of the peak was in the shade. There was ample evidence of cornice failure all around though. The slope we were on had ~1cm thick very supportive crust (boot pen = 0) at ~1650m. We were worried the beating sun would melt through this quickly so with suspected persistent slab activity nearby turned around. Of course as soon as we headed down the sun hid behind the clouds and never came back, and I suspect that the crust stayed intact all day. </p>

Terrain Ridden

Mellow slopes.

Snow Conditions

Crusty, Hard.

Weather Conditions

Cloudy.