Cruickmank

Today we toured up Cruickshank to see what the warm storm did to the snowpack. Staging at 12 km on the East Fork with a 4x4 vehicle would be reasonable. We survived a soft mushy sled approach. As we switched to skis the sun came out and offered panoramic views. We saw numerous size 1 and 2 wet loose avalanches, and one size 3 wet slab avalanche deep in the park that we suspect ran during the rain event. Just as we reached the ridgetop, the weather took a turn, wind and rain convinced us to do a quick transition and retreat to a more sheltered area. Before we tucked tail and ran we dug a quick pit and found 50 cm of wet snow overlaying a moist, trending dry, pack down to the early March crust down 120 cm. Today we felt it was still possible to trigger loose wet avalanches in steep terrain so we avoided steep pitches on our survival ski back to the sleds.