Elk soup, with a crust

We headed up Elk today to see how conditions stacked up by elevation at the edge of Strathcona Park. A snowy road allowed for sled travel right from the highway. Snow might be an overstatement, as we were traveling on an absolute slurpee until about 1500 m, a short distance above the upper cutblocks where we began skinning. As we poked out of treeline, the surface changed to a soft 10 cm crust that seemed to have only recently begun to form. We wanted to check on the status of the persistent slab we had observed elsewhere on the island, and by 1600 m found anywhere from 30-70 cm sitting on the old early January crust. Where 30 cm deep, an airy 20 cm layer of loose facets sat on the crust. Yikes! Where 70 cm deep, we found only a thin layer of faceted snow on the crust. In both spots, the new surface crust seemed unlikely to be capable of propagating a fracture line. We spent some time chatting about higher elevations where the crust might be thin or absent and the pronounced facets preserved, then shredded crust and schmoo back to the sleds.