AvCan Vancouver Island
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Friday 1st March, 2024 3:30PM
What a change from our last visit to Cokely! Full on winter and full on avalanche conditions today with strong south winds forming widespread wind slabs in open terrain with 70 cm of snow from the previous 48 hours.
Visibility was limited but we saw small crowns on pretty much all the steep terrain we laid eyes on. We stopped our ascent much earlier than usual with a visibly reloaded bed surface on the big convex roll within the old ski hill. Pretty sure we would have triggered something there.
Our test profile gave many results from easy to hard on deeper and deeper wind slab layers. Our first easy tap fractured down 15 cm and our first hard tap down 70 cm on the crust that sits on the ground. These and the several failures in between suggested to us that a destructive step-down avalanche would be possible.
Challenging sledding through the wind slab! Nicer riding closer to the parking lot but there are many hazards buried within reach of sled track and skis.
