Heavy Greenhousing Today

Heavy greenhousing in the Shames area today due to in and out low cloud with temps rising well above 0 at times even on top of the Dome. Not sure polar aspects below 1400m will survive this, though a clear night might dry it out enough. There's a lot of new snow in the Shames backcountry from the last three days with a number of warming/cooling related interfaces within. Loaded higher terrain had 50-60cms of soft cold powder at least as of this morning. Below about 1250m, there was a thin zipper crust within the new snow (maybe 8cm down), noticeable but not particularly unpleasant. At 1100m NW aspect, ski pen 5cm, boot pen 25cm. By the time we skied out, everything below about 1000m skied like soup.

We observed a large natural slab avalanche in upper Zola bowl on a NE aspect. We couldn't see the whole crown so it's hard to say whether it was just a large wind slab natural or cornice triggered.