Just a few obs

yan.kaczynski , Sunday 19th January, 2025 11:15AM

Beautiful past few days both in terms of wx and snow quality allowed to step gradually in the ALP and into bigger terrain with confidence by testing terrain. There was a recent avalanche cycle (Thursday and Friday) that hit steeper slopes, mainly under trigger points like rock bands and cornices. We observed some very large (size 3) recent avalanches in the ALP west of Superbowl, most notably a big one on South Morris, same aspect as Vitamin D and similar slope angle. Other major ones were mainly on N faces. Glaciers are filling in but the snow quality wasn’t as appealing as E/SE/W/SW slopes. As we opened the uptrack to the summit of Superbowl we could clearly experience a different snowpack from everything lower down towards Shames. A melt-freeze crust was present on 3/4 of the way up on the slightly more S aspect of the face. We skied a more E aspect that had none of that crust and provided incredible riding. Friday we’ve cut down a chunk of cornice (a meter thick and about 4 meters wide) at the top of Geronimo (that had no tracks yet), the quite significant weight took the new snow out along the way, but didn’t step down to any other layers in the snowpack.