Hector South Ridge

<p>After a very long, slow trail break up to 2500m on Hector South Ridge we were rewarded with some amazing powder skiing at treeline. Breaking trail wasn't as bad as the last storm as the snow has settled a fair bit already but today there was only 2 of us so still took as long. I couldn't really find any layers of concern below or at treeline, basically I saw this storm's snow over the last storms with a thin layer of facets on ground everywhere i looked. Basel facets are 5-10cm thick where I dug down to find them. The mid pack was settled snow from the last storm and the new storm became less dense as it reached the surface. The surface snow is not "blower" pow like the last big storm. HS is around 120cm at treeline. We got very isolated whumpfing in areas where the new snow has now bridged over large areas of small trees and the area a few meters from the road (again bridged bush/small trees). I didn't check that box above because this was limited to these areas only. We saw several old avalanches that released at different times during the storm. Some are reloaded to the point you can barely make out the crown, others look to have released at the very end of the storm. There is visable wind affect in the alpine and many windward slopes are down to rock again. As we entered the alpine the snow changed quicky on the chest of the ridge that we skinned up, windslab up to 15cm thick was found. From our high point we skied a lower angled lee slope beside the ridge crest which we skinned up, the snow was good but too deep to get turns in due to slope angle. Once at treeline we skied steeper trees/open trees and even dropped a few small pillows without any sluffing, cracks or whumpfing- again in these sheltered areas we basically found pow over the last storm's snow. We skied down our skin track to exit the area for the most part, when trying to ski outside the track we would slow down rather quickly. Got back to the road around 2:30 and the plow had headed north creating about 1.5 lanes, once it comes back down it should be in great conditions considering the volume of snow that just fell in the area.</p>

Terrain Ridden

Mellow slopes, Dense trees, Steep slopes, Open trees.

Terrain Avoided

Alpine slopes.

Avalanche Conditions

30cm + of new snow, or significant drifting, or rain in the last 48 hours.

Slab avalanches today or yesterday.

Snow Conditions

Deep powder, Wind affected, Powder.

Weather Conditions

Warm, Sunny.