Ursus Minor and Niccy's Notch

<p>Took advantage of the bluebird early morning conditions to climb towards Ursus Minor. Few natural avalanches observed in Connaught Creek (see Avalanche tab). Lots of wind affect from the previous evening wind event along valley bottom with drifts up to 30cm deep in places. More wind affect up high as soon as we got above the Ursus Trees with some upside down snow, fresh and buried windslabs. We threaded the needle to 2500m when the weather came in with strong wind gusts and quickly deteriorating visibility as the clouds rolled in. We considered dropping one of the bailout chutes into Dispatcher Bowl but windslabs in the entrance and assumed flat light conditions in the bowl made us ski down along our uptrack until reaching treeline. We then skied open trees with 30-40 cm of ski penetration into Dispatcher Bowl and exited in the small gully just skiers right of the waterfall. We decided to go back up for more and skinned up to Balu Pass where we observed two groups skiing some good and deep pow. We climbed to the entrance of Niccy's Notch along the steepest skin track I have seen in many months, sections of it were actually steeper than the turns that had been laid down next to it, i.e. up to 25 degrees! Two sets of tracks went down into the upper Cheops North 5 aka North Bowl but it seemed like the people had skinned back out of it because of flat light. We dropped into Niccy's Notch, which still had no tracks at 2:00 PM, variously avoiding the windloaded left side and middle of the entrance. The snow got 30-40cm deep about 10m in but more variable with some wind affect once it opened up more. The crossloaded fan had ski penetration of 15-20cm. A great day all in all given the rapidly deteriorating weather.</p>

Weather Report

<p>The day started as bluebird without wind but changed abruptly with the incoming system at 10:30 AM. Wind started gusting to strong at 2400m and the clouds rolled in.</p>

Terrain Ridden

Alpine slopes, Steep slopes, Open trees.

Snow Conditions

Wind affected, Powder.

Weather Conditions

Windy, Cloudy, Sunny.