Tommy Trails, Turns & Trees

It was a beautiful day in Tommy Creek. The clouds lifted and we had views and some sunshine between small passing flurries. The winds we from the south and blowing enough to move a moderate amount of snow at ridge top. There was about 55 cm of soft storm snow at treeline over a supportive snowpack. We saw numerous avalanches in wind-loaded alpine terrain. While these were mostly small (size 1), there were some that would be big enough to bury a person (size 2). After stopping to talk about it, we decided we did not like the regular pull into Tommy 2 (a large NW facing feature recently wind loaded) given the current considerable avalanche hazard. Instead, we opted to have fun building our own single track through the trees to get into the saddle and found deep, untouched powder as a reward in the small rolls and mellow terrain of Tommy 2. It looks like the storm rolled in warm when it dropped it's snow. Below 1700 m there was a rain crust in the middle of the new snow and below 1400 m there was a sharp decrease in the snowpack. By the time we got down to the trucks at 1100m we were riding on ice over mud.