Sugar and Ice

There is new snow falling!! It was only about 1 cm of new over a variety of surfaces including old, facetted snow (which wasn’t near enough to elevate the hazard or change ski conditions yet) but it was nice to see some flakes in the sky. We skied a steep north facing slope of Elk Mountain in Barkerville while avalanche hazard remains low. This years shallow snowpack was very noticeable with the large amounts of small trees that don't normally clog the lower paths. We didn’t see any signs of recent slab avalanches but the 15 cm of sugary old snow sluffed from our skis and ran pretty far over the crust from earlier this month. This crust is starting to break down but remains supportive, keeping travel fast and easy.