North Twin Slide

My touring partners and I skinned up to north twin slide today under beautiful clear skies. We noticed whumphs and collapses on our skin in through the trees. Once we were in the drainage the snow got a lot more stable under our skis and we continued to ascend. At about 3400’ at 12pm we dug down to the ground @ 95cm and noted fist hard snow for 12cm followed by 1f for 50cm, followed by an 8cm 4f layer, followed by 1f to the ice at the ground. We performed instability tests which produced no result. We continued up the drainage and noted some wind drifts on the edges with graupel pooling in dips in the snow. As we rounded the corner, at about 4000’ we noticed a large connected slope of smooth pillowy snow above us and decided to heed our turnaround time a little early. Lovely powder turns in the gully. We got back to the parking lot at 2:30pm just as it started to rain!

Quick report