Larsen

Spent the last few days at Larsen cabin. Overall, we found great powder skiing across the north side of the compass and observed no avalanche activity, natural or human-triggered. The few slopes we traveled on with south exposure had a noticeable sun crust buried about 8cms. We dug a pit on Mar 14th at 1200m, NNE aspect, and identified two layers of concern, one down 50cms and one down 95cms. HS 350cms (much better than last year at this time!!!). Our ECT cracked but did not propagate down 50cms on 25. When we pried the block off, it broke at 50 on a fully planar surface. Using a shovel, I then pried the remaining block off and it broke with another planar release on the layer down 95cms. The 50cms above the layer were right side up with low density powder on the surface that had accumulated over the course of last week and denser settled snow underneath. The first two days, we traveled in the alpine and subalpine and skied a number of steep lines up to 45 degrees. The low density snow on the surface produced large sluffs, but we observed no avalanche activity. We experienced whumpfing on ridge tops and setting a skin track up a steep treed slope with south exposure (suspected settlement happening on the sun crust down 8cms), but not in any of the northerly terrain we were skiing. We had a strong pulse of SW wind in the early hours of Sunday morning that formed noticeable wind slabs, but we observed no natural activity even in steep loaded terrain and were unable to get anything to move, including on a few steep test slopes. Saturday night through Sunday brought around 10cms of new snow. We spent Sunday skiing surprisingly deep powder laps in treeline with great snow down to 950m.