The Needle - Talc

jwtebb

It was a long day. 27km, 1700m of vert, door to door 9.5hrs. We had left at an early hour to make sure we hit the solar aspects as early as possible, although due to cloudy conditions, there was a solar input at times and definitely was looking out for any activity, but non observed. We chose to ascend the S,SW slope in the burnt trees. Certainly kept in mind the multiple Sz 2/2.5 avalanches that we were seeing from other MINs. As we wrapped around onto the S aspects, a Sz 2.5/3 had run to valley bottom, (3-5days old). This had run down to ground. Staying well clear, we ascended the low angle terrain and worked our way up to the ridge line, where we determined that we should boot pack, as we found the Wind slab pretty hard to punch into. A couple of other observations was how variable the certain crusts were to load. At the higher elevations the crusts made for heavier load bearing.