Crusty Corbin

We ventured into Corbin today, thanks to the Fernie Snowmobile Association for track packing the road, the compaction made the snow much more resilient to the rain that happened down low. It is very icy and difficult to keep the machines cool, we stopped many times to pack snow on the tunnels! We made it up to 2200 m via the rain gauge access trail. There is a supportive 25 cm crust in the alpine, with dry snow underneath. At tree line the crust is breakable to boots. Moist snow lies underneath the crust at, and below 2000 m. Below 1700 m the snowpack is shallow, rain soaked, and below threshold for avalanches. The temperature at 2000 m was -3 and cooling throughout the day. We are expecting the snowpack to freeze overnight and give more strength to the developing crusts. Winds increased through the day to sustained moderate. There has been previous significant wind transport in this region that has left windward features scoured to rock and leeward depositions upwards of 2 m. Large cornice growth and many downed trees are clear evidence of strong winds in this area! A thin layer of graupel is on the surface above 2000 m, and it began to snow in the afternoon! We saw no new avalanches today, and had no results in our tests. We are expecting the avalanche hazard to rise again with more new snow, but our focus is shifting to surface and storm snow instabilities due to existing snow being well bonded and bridged.