Sleddin’ ? Stay on the Trail !

Lots of km covered today (on excellent groomed trail …. Big thanks to Elkford Snowmobile Assoc. groomers !). We ran west from Elkford up to 1900 m. In our travels, we saw lots of terrain on all aspects and at all elevations. Saw no recent avalanches, nor any recent wind affect. The couple of older avalanches we did see had started in high, cross-loaded start-zones and had scrubbed down into the facets in the bottom half of the snowpack. The hadn’t run full path, but were still Size 2.5 to 3, so we took care to keep out from under similar features. We dug into the snow in a few places, and found a similar story: the bottom half is weak facet-crystals, ….. really unsupportive off-trail, and a poor foundation for our snowpack. With clear skies and this later-in-the-winter period, the sun was definitely hitting steeper south facing slopes and we’d expect to see sun crusts continuing to develop in these places. No solar-released avalanches however, thanks to cooler temps (high of-10) and light winds.