Sky Pilot Moraines - A Big Na!

paul.c.mcbride , Wednesday 13th March, 2024 10:00PM

Fun day avalanche viewing on day 3 of a big mountain decision making and ski mountaineering course with Holly Walker (Fall Line Guides). 280cm crown down to basal facets across the ridge above the moraine. Big one! Broken skies with a couple of convective flurries with In-N-Out Sun. Fun quality heavy pow above 1300m, getting extremely isothermal and concrete-like on the ski out by 2pm.

CT did not produce results in a N facing windloaded test slope feature, so snow depths are likely deeper here than measured in other locations on open slopes. Propagation Saw Test also no results, although it was tough to find the problem layer on start. We isolated a column and slid the shovel down the back side to see if we could get any of the more recent layers to pop off - we found some DF particles down 10cm all the way to a graupel layer that must have occured sometime during the March 9-11 storm cycle. Surface Hoar layer observed from March 8 laying flat, down 145cm which was the problem layer we were most interested in investigating. Temperature gradient very low (-0.1) between layers which to us indicated a healing snowpack. Will be interesting to see the next Na cycle with the extreme warming coming up! Hold on to yer horses!