Castlecrag crust and cutblock corn

martinfcaruana , Sunday 24th March, 2024 6:50PM

Planned to ski the northeast chute on Castlecrag. Camped out at 550 m on east fork the night before and started skinning before sunrise to hopefully beat the warming. Snow in cutblocks was extremely hard and icy before the sun came up. Once we entered Strathcona the snow warmed rapidly and became very slushy less than 2 hours after sunrise. We ascended the south face of Castlecrag where there were numerous steep slopes covered in new and older roller balls. At the top of our objective we found the chute hadn’t received enough sun to soften the snow. The snow was a very grabby breakable crust with a large field of icy looking debris below. We decided this was not safe to ski with the steepness of the line, so we enjoyed some creamy slush turns on the south face of Castlecrag. We stuck to mellow slopes, however a couple very small loose wet slides were released by skiers. Ski highlight was some perfect corn turns in the massive cutblock right next to the park boundary.