Nadahini (E, NE)

<p>Weather was warm, around 0 C. Light snow still falling all day. Wind about 15-25 kmh coming from S. Haines Pass had about 10cm of new snow on last Sunday, but due to high winds this was very variable, with some lee features much deeper than that, and windward features often scoured and icy. Didn't go above the treeline due to visibility being poor. I tried to trigger some inconsequential slabs on convex rolls. I could not trigger anything larger than 1-2 square feet in slab size, even on the worst convex rolls on wind loaded terrain. There appeared to be a significant weak layer buried in the snow, but the storm/wind slab was not yet hardened or tough enough to propagate cracks. I.e. the lateral bonding of the slab was weak. I would be concerned, however, as this slab hardens and compacts, over what appeared to be faceted snow. As such, the skiing on Wednesday was pretty good. At about 8pm I went up a final time, and more snow had accumulated on the cross-loaded lee features by then. Amazing skiing, since I was pretty confident the slab hadn't formed up yet after repeated ongoing testing. I didn't see any avalanches, whumpfs or shooting cracks. I tried moving around to the NE slope, towards the steeper, more consistent-grade N face of Nadahini. I wanted to avoid the S wind, but it just followed me around the mountain and scoured the places I wanted to ski. So I just went back to the mellower E slope, which had some bushes and terrain features that deposited a lot of great powder on the lee side.</p>

Terrain Ridden

Convex slopes, Sunny slopes, Open trees.

Terrain Avoided

Alpine slopes.

Avalanche Conditions

Rapid temperature rise to near zero degrees or wet surface snow.

30cm + of new snow, or significant drifting, or rain in the last 48 hours.

Snow Conditions

Crusty, Wind affected, Powder.

Weather Conditions

Stormy, Warm, Cloudy.