Surprise Pass

Skied Surprise Pass today. The day was overcast, with light flurries. Temperature of -3 at 13:00 and 2290m on south aspects. Everything remained well frozen today as the sun did not pop out. We observed some size 1 wet sloughs out of the steep south couloirs on the way to the pass, which also over-ran the skin track (we choose to take the usual moraine route instead). We also observed a size 2 on the north side of Surprise Pass at 2100m that looked like a wet slide out of steep rocky terrain, see attached photo. Slide was likely yesterday in the heat of the day. It ran for about 200m and appeared to entrain only storm snow. All aspects but north had a crust from yesterday, while east aspects had only heavy snow. Good snow quality on north aspects, except for the multitude of tracks. The storm snow was very well bonded to the underlying snow where we skied, but we didn’t venture too far from the usual route. The snow remains isothermal under the storm snow below 1850m. Happy skiing.