Fraser peak and Bryant Lake area

<p>Spend the day around Fraser Peak and Bryant Lake traveling on a variety of aspects. Sunny above a a layer of valley clouds until about 1h30PM and then high clouds rolled in quite rapidly, with light flurries falling by 4PM. Cold in the valley but warmer higher up. Light winds, except near ridge top where winds were a little stronger. East side of Fraser Peak is generally wind affected with a variety of surface: windbuff snow, soft slabs, hard slabs and even light powder (up to 10 cm) on top of a mix bag of wind slabs (of varying thickness). North side of Fraser Peak seems to have been hit harder by the north winds prior to the last snowfall of last Thursday-Friday especially higher up, with a supportive wind crust/slab in areas covered by about 15 cm of light density snow. The top third of Big Kahuna partially slid prior to that last snowfall, probably 4-6 days ago. Didn't investigate the bed surface in detail but crown appear to be 30 to 40 cm. Suspect bed surface to be a harder windslab interface. Debris are barely noticeable with new snow covering them, probably only size 1 to 1.5. Southwest aspect of Fraser Lake generally had 10 to 15 cm of low density snow covering a variety of surface: unconsolidated deep powder, wind slabs (varying in thickness from 10 cm to up to 1m), depth hoar near shallow areas and a deeper consolidated snowpack in sheltered areas (gullies). And....surface hoar 5 to 10 mm in size was observed on east to southwest aspect from about 1200 m to ridge top. Overall snow remains generally good for skiing although there is variability depending on aspects and elevations. The Avalanche Canada current message is bang on - wind affected snow in exposed area and nice powder in sheltered area. The snow that is currently falling is welcome but it will be interesting to see how it reacts on the different surfaces.</p>

Terrain Ridden

Alpine slopes, Mellow slopes, Steep slopes, Sunny slopes.

Terrain Avoided

Convex slopes.

Snow Conditions

Wind affected, Powder.

Weather Conditions

Cloudy, Sunny.