Oh dear, near Mear

Today in Elkford we were greeted by something we haven’t seen in a while - snow falling from the sky! We weren’t sure what to expect coming out of last week’s big rain event, so we were happy to see snow right to the staging area. The trails were thin to start, but once you passed the ticket cabin, there we no concerns. At 13:00 at 2100 m it was - 1.5 degrees. The wind was calm, and it was snowing lightly. Moving through the terrain, we observed a widespread natural avalanche cycle from last week. Most of the avalanches were persistent slab avalanches with depths varying from 50 - 70 cm, all around size 2-2.5. To further investigate the persistent slab we dug our pit on a NE aspect at 2100m adjacent to piece of terrain that had slid. Temperatures have been steadily dropping since yesterday, forming a thick 10 cm piece of ice on the surface of the snowpack. We spent the day talking about the “rink” because this surface crust was so smooth and slippery it was almost as if a zamboni had been through the terrain moments before us. Heads up hockey if you are moving through higher elevation terrain off the groomed trails - the surface is slippery. The thick surface crust was extremely supportive. Because the crust was impenetrable, it was blocking any of the buried weak layers from being reactive. We're hoping this snowfall keeps up, winter is not over yet!