Five Mile Basin

<p>This is a report for day 3 of our AST2 course in the Whitewater backcountry. We hiked up to the silver king ridge and then decided to ski a line through open trees in acidophilus. We did a slope test of the line we planned to ski, which produced no results. Due to cloudy conditions, we were not able to observe many peaks, or ridgelines around us, and much of five mile basin was blanketed in fog - making it difficult to observe any avalanches. Things cleared slightly over the day and we did not note any recent avalanches near the terrain we skied. We regrouped in the basin after our first run, and decided to cross over to the SW aspect of five mile basin to dig some pits. Pit results for the group: ECTN down 25 cms & CTE (Sp) down 25cm. A few small surface hoar crystals were observable at the 25 cm layer. After testing the snowpack, we climbed about 200m up the SW aspect of the basin and skied an open line back to valley bottom. Skiing quality was suprisingly good on our first run in acidophilus. There were about 5cm of fresh snow on top of the crust that had formed from warming earlier this week and the crust was less dense. There was a more robust crust in five mile basin on SW aspects but skiing was still pretty good! </p>

Terrain Ridden

Open trees, Steep slopes.

Terrain Avoided

Alpine slopes, Convex slopes, Sunny slopes.

Snow Conditions

Crusty, Powder.

Weather Conditions

Cloudy, Foggy.