Hear! Hear! Let's Ski at Mear!

Today we visited the Elkford area. Our questions were "How much new snow has fallen?" and "Is the skiing good?" To answer this, we went up to Mear Lake, where we found 20-30 cm of fresh snow, great sledding, and surprisingly good skiing! With the clear skies, the steep southerly slopes began to warm, but the wind and air temperature (-5) kept the snow cool enough to ski without becoming hazardous. We didn't observe any natural avalanches in motion today, but saw one recent size 1.5 avalanche out of extreme terrain above Mear Lake, likely 24 hours old. We dug into the snow at 2400 m, and found 40-50 cm of soft snow above the crust formed by the atmospheric river. The top 10 cm were starting to become moist in the sun, but the rest was dry and showed no slab properties. The crust from the atmospheric river is a whopping 40 cm thick and is bridging any potential deeper instabilities. Going forward, we'll be thinking about spring warming in this area, but right now, flat meadows and northerly slopes offer the best riding quality.