Spring, but not a spring snowpack.

wardsbd , Friday 21st April, 2023 1:30PM

Spent the last two weeks skiing around Purcell Lodge. Mostly good powder skiing on north aspects and on all aspects right after convective flurries. Some good moist/corn skiing in the afternoon on solar aspects at treeline and below and some breakable crust zig-zag skiing on cooler days or in the morning. Easy travel conditions. Most days were a mixture of convective flurries and and sun. Warming produced crusts on solar aspects and below 1900m on polar aspects but we never had the big warm up. When the heat did penetrate the polar alpine aspects from the green housing effect, it woke up deep persistent slabs in shallow areas and the storm slab on all aspects ( near surface facets between the April 1 and April 7 melt freeze crusts and facets/surface hoar on Polar aspects on the April 1) . Not much new avalanche activity over the last 5 days as temperatures were just above freezing in the afternoon with a good overnight freeze. But the next big warm up will likely wake up the deep persistent slab and April 1 storm slabs on all aspects. I dug a few pits and areas were the snowpack is less than 180cm I was sinking in the basal facets at the bottom of the pit.