Scratchers Down & Sunglasses Out!

The day started out cold at -7 at staging and had warmed up to 0 when we reached treeline at 1pm. We found a widespread crust on the surface up to 1600m with new feathery surface hoar crystals growing on top (see photo). That layer is likely to pose as our next persistent avalanche problem at lower elevations when it gets buried by future storms. Higher up the snow was still soft and dry and riding conditions were good. It's still pretty shallow in the area though, and hitting rocks was a real possibility (total snowpack at 2100m at treeline was only 1 metre). We found an older avalanche likely from last week on a north facing slope that had propagated/spread across quite a large piece of terrain and had failed on a deep layer near the ground. We suspect with the warm temperatures forecast this week we may see more avalanches failing on this deep layer.