Summit Creek towards Taiya

<p>We went for a tour from Summit Creek into the valley towards Taiya. Lots of skinning and very few turns were made as we stayed in very conservative terrain. Weak snowpack in general. Lots of whoomphing and hollow sounds on flat and low angle terrain. It was also a bit flat light and this did not inspire to take a closer look at suspect slopes nor could we see some of the recently reported avalanches. We did see a couple slides on E/SE aspects, but couldn’t tell if they were recent or not. Noticed a lot of variability in the snowpack: loose lightly facetted old surface snow (sheltered areas mostly at highway level), soft and hard wind slabs, very hard wind hammered snow and sastrugis. Often within varying over a few meters of difference. The day was again windy and it was snowing lightly. I’ll keep an eye on the weather as it definitely will be interesting to see how the snowpack will react if there is significant snow loading in the next few days...</p>

Terrain Ridden

Alpine slopes, Mellow slopes.

Terrain Avoided

Convex slopes, Steep slopes.

Avalanche Conditions

Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.

Slab avalanches today or yesterday.

Snow Conditions

Crusty, Hard, Wind affected.

Weather Conditions

Windy, Cloudy.