Dolomite shoulder

MATHURIN , Sunday 2nd February, 2025 4:15PM

Started with -24 at the car at 8.45, big inversion (felt like negative single digit at 2300) Not so much new snow down in the forest, about 10cm only. It’s sitting on unsupportive facets that makes poor riding quality as soon as you step out of the old tracks Higher on the ridge there is more fresh snow (25-30cm) but it still sits on unsupportive facets. Couple of old tracks barely visible only on the ridge. We observed little cracks on this storm snow (about 50cm from the skis) on the way up but we got 2 big whumpf and cracks a few meters away just as we were about to drop in to ski those sparse trees. It was on the SE aspect of the ridge at about 2300m high. There were some wind loading on that side of the ridge (wid coming from the NW) and most of the whumpfs were observed on older wind slabs covered by 5-6 cm of fresh snow. We went back up to the ridge and skied the thicker trees lower down. Poor riding quality as the snowpack is very unsupportive. -19 at 2.15pm at the car.