Bryant Lake

<p>With a persistent slab in the forecast, our mindset for today was cautious. We set out to check the distribution, elevation and aspect of the problem layer, while being careful to stay clear of overhead hazard and far from potential runout zones and large connected pieces of terrain. We traveled by sled over hard crusty surfaces with a skiff of new snow. Ever mindful of overhead hazard we selected a small low angle (20 degrees) NW facing slope to dig a profile at 1200m. We had repeated hard compression test results with a sudden planar (pop) and confirmed the presence of a reactive old surface hoar layer overlaying a hard crust 75cm deep. In our second test we also observed another weak layer 60cm deep with similar results ‘popping’ like a cash register. The upper snowpack consists of a very hard uniform slab of consolidated snow. Most notable was that these reactive layers were in low angle terrain and at lower alpine elevations, in places we are unused to finding buried surface hoar in the White Pass. There was no wind today and temperatures were stable at -4. </p>

Terrain Ridden

Alpine slopes, Mellow slopes.

Terrain Avoided

Convex slopes, Steep slopes.

Snow Conditions

Crusty.

Weather Conditions

Cloudy.