Sunny Quartz Creek

First day on skis. Went for a poke around Quartz creek. A few sledders out and about dodging rocks and logs. I'd say it's still pretty early unless you really know the area, or like replacing your a-arms. Looks like everyone was enjoying the sun and new snow.

Repeatable compression tests produced moderate resistant planner results down 50cms in the new storm snow interface and hard sudden planar results down 65-70cms on faceted crystals above a 2-4cm thick melt freeze crust. The facets and crust layer were our biggest concern. An extended column test produced a fracture across the entire column on this layer at 23 taps (ECTP23). The new snow was fist resistance, below that was four finger followed by a 2-4cm pencil crust and fist facets/depth hoar crystals to the ground. Lots of whumpfing at all elevations and aspects, some were quite loud!