Avalanche Crest

Nearly 10 cm overnight at the trailhead. Skin track to the bowl is mostly excellent, all on the summer trail. Yesterday's uptrack became extremely difficult to follow once out of the trees as we were in a ping pong ball and it was completely blown in. So there was a bit of messing around in the hyper flat light to get to the last climb to gain the crest proper. That slope showed minimal cracking 25 cm deep under yesterday's burried windslab but no propagation. We climbed to 2150m and skied down the slightly more conservative option (skiers left) on the front side to 1900m, just above the small cliff band. Wind affect was noted between 2150 and 2050m on the skiers right side of the larger openings. From 1900m, we broke trail back up through the trees to regain the crest and ski the top 250m again. Trail breaking in there was 40-50cm deep and on numerous occasions, we easily cut localized 40cm thick slabs at the kick turns and on pillows, i.e. steep unsupported features. The new storm slab was F in hardness and not very cohesive yet but was releasing easily on a surface hoar layer (Nov 24 SH), see picture. While skiing down through the small cliff band, we cut a few more 40cm deep slabs off pillows. We did not check what was the weak layer but the same SH layer was suspected. The lookers left leg of "the pants" skied amazing all the way down.

Nov 24 SH down 40 cm.