Quick report
Thin coverage abounds. We had originally intended to ski up to Septum Pass and perhaps sneak up in the Cauterized Couloir but thin coverage and lots of skinning over rocks dimmed our plans. Nosebleed has decent coverage, albeit a bony pick down for the intrepid only. Pray for snow.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- light
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
The day started warm at 27 degrees in the IM lot with broken skies that trended sunny and clear. Calm winds that were barely perceptible out of the SE.
Snowpack
The snowpack ranged from shallow and bony 15cm rocky boulder fields to 70cm in gully features. Gold Chord Lake itself has about 30cm of settling snow on top of some moist ice and frozen ice beneath. We experienced an ice whumph towards the edge of the lake but did not experience any water or signs of weak ice and put the skin track/skate across it with little fanfare. Curious about this, I reached out to local ice expert Luc Mehl who thought it could have been related to our proximity to the outlet and the fact that there is still flowing water beneath snow.
Wind effect from the consistent moderate gusts yesterday was almost non-observant with isolated wind skins and scalloping. The upper snowpack is developing cohesion and settling and while this felt slightly slabbier at times, we did not see cohesion or failure on test slopes.
Our snowpack tests showed no results at 4,150' SSE. We saw generally rightside up structure and the old, buried wind slabs we have been tracking throughout the forecast area were loose and almost entirely faceted out at this location.