Shames schmoo surfing

<p>Today we ski toured off Shames, with cloudy, warm conditions. At the prayer flags, we found 25cm of moist new snow over the rain crust. The crust is firm and supportive to skis. We were able to trigger size 1 loose wet avalanches out of steep treeline terrain than ran quite far on the firm crust surface. We also saw widespread natural loose wet avalanches up to size 2.5 out of steep alpine and treeline terrain. These avalanches were in the bowl behind the ski area and also out of extreme terrain, running into the gullies up the drainage past the road. We avoided touring up steep slopes because we didn’t want to trigger avalanches onto ourselves. We also avoided dropping in to steep rollovers to avoid triggering these avalanches. Another technique we used is skiing off angle to avoid being caught in entraining snow. </p>

Terrain Ridden

Alpine slopes, Mellow slopes, Open trees.

Terrain Avoided

Convex slopes, Steep slopes.

Avalanche Conditions

Rapid temperature rise to near zero degrees or wet surface snow.

Snow Conditions

Heavy, Powder.

Weather Conditions

Cloudy, Warm, Wet.