Kahunafornia

brianhyde , Sunday 10th March, 2024 8:20PM

With uncertainty in the WP weather forecast we weren’t too sure what to expect today. Sunny skies, minimal wind and mod rating encouraged us to step into steeper terrain. We skinned the guts of Big Kahuna accessing snow as we travelled. Near the lake we encountered 5-10cm of nice low density snow on rock solid crust and pockets of dust on crust. Travelling higher conditions continued to improve with a consistent 15cm on firm crust and deeper pockets to skiers left that have been loaded. Some small releases and sluffs have released some snow from the rocks and chutes. Pinwheeled debris still soft. As we approached 1600m a noticeable change in snow quality occurred with considerable deeper ski penetration, a shifting top layer and our firm crust appeared to disappear. We dug around and it appeared the top 15cm layer was sitting on a weak layer of unbonded crystallized snow. Potentially buried surface hoar. Visually this layer could be seen to contain a lot of space and air, and although our ECT test didn’t provide reliable results we could easily slide this layer by hand. We opted for a conservative decision, ripped and skied some great snow. It should be noted a whump was encountered in semi-open treeline at ~1000m NE aspect.