Mount Field

Party of five attempted Mount Field today. We took the ‘shortcut’ but encountered a heinous and old skin track. Rock hard crust, downed trees, and unbonded snow. I would recommend taking the road all the way in and out. The amount of low density snow over the crust increased as we got to treeline and above, maybe 10-15 cm. Skinning conditions were actually quite good. We got to the headwall, started ascending, and were just 10 meters from being out of avalanche when the trail breaker hit a wind slab that collected some storm snow, creating a size one avalanche. It propagated to about 25 m wide. One person was caught and thrown of balance but did not fall over and did not get moved more than a meter or two. We decided to turn around there and had a great ski to the bottom. The amount of low density snow decreases as you descend and, although you can really feel the hard crust below, we found the ski to be pretty decent. We also noticed a size one natural as we descended that had not yet occurred when we passed on our way up. The winds were picking up as we encountered the wind slab issue.