Candy Cain

Happy Holidays to all. We are stoked to report conditions around the Island are tremendous! We spent the day in the Mt Cain backcountry. The island has seen over a metre of snow since the atmospheric river. At lower elevations this is on bare ground, which has made getting to the alpine a real challenge, but today we succeeded! Once we got to ridge top, evidence of strong wind over the last few days was apparent. Old unreactive wind slabs dominate the alpine scene. We noted multiple old slab avalanches up to size 1.5, likely occurring 48 hours ago, in steep, rocky, wind loaded terrain. We were only able to get a couple of small pockets of new wind slab moving sluggishly. We skied the main guts of west bowl after gathering observations on our ascent. We avoided a couple larger, steeper slopes holding wind transported snow. Ski quality in sheltered terrain was terrific and improved as we descended. Overall conditions for Christmas at Cain are as good as they ever are. Looking forward to seeing lots of MIN’s on the Island map next week!