Pre-storm Syncline Exploratory Tour

We set out on a exploratory tour up the gully to climbers left of Syncline S1. The trailhead was dry, so we started boot-packing directly from the car. Were able to transition after ~ 1km, but quickly switched back to boot-packing due to low coverage across the stream in the gully. We were able to transition and skin once exiting the gully and onto the North-East face we set out to ski. We observed ~5cm of fresh snow on top of the sun crust. Our goal was to find some wind-loaded snow to ski (which we did find, around 15-20cm deep in places). We also wanted to better understand the new snow / old snow layer before the 20-30+cm we are expecting this week. On the skin track we saw poor bonding between this new snow and older-crust. The crust layer was "punchable" in the trees and shaded aspects. Observed some wind slab when above tree level, and decided to transition and ski from there. The wind-loaded terrain was easily releasable on top of the old snow, and will be problematic as new snow loads atop it. We saw some small cracks on this terrain. Great day overall. Made some nice turns, but a super tedious/slow approach at low tide made this tour a lot longer than anticipated.