Mear Lake

Today in the Elkford area we were pleasantly surprised with dry snow starting at 1500m. There was 20cm of accumulated storm snow that was soft and powdery. On our sled approach, we rode over some debris from a large (size 3) natural storm slab avalanche that we estimate occurred Tuesday early in the day. We toured up to an alpine shoulder along a ridge to 2300m. As we approached the more open, wind-affected terrain we started to get whumpfing and cracking. We dug a profile and found 130cm total snow depth. The top 20cm was soft storm snow, over a more consolidated old wind slab layer. These sit on a 50cm layer of large facets (sugary snow crystals) that developed from cold temperatures. Our snowpack tests showed a weakness where the old wind slab and facets meet our test result was sudden (ECTP 11 down 40cm on facets sz 2-3) Extended column test 11 taps down 40cm from the surface. This along with the signs of instability had us choosing conservative low-angle terrain.