Low Tide Gorge Ride

We headed up to the Gorge to check on wind slab development, and the early December surface hoar layer. Also, we were on the lookout for problematic basal facets, but we weren't surprised that we didn't find them at the elevation we reached (2000 m). We found a variety of wind affected surfaces on exposed treeline ridgetops, and some cracking around our skis, but no shooting cracks. We expect that at higher elevations in bigger features, the wind slab problem might be more concerning. On a north aspect, we found the surface hoar down 80 cm, and continuing to gain strength. It was unreactive to compression tests, possibly due to the crust sandwich 25 cm above it. We had decent ankle deep skiing down from the ridge in the trees, but as we got closer to 1500 m we really had to watch out for frozen tree bombs and barely buried logs, stumps and bushes.

The surface has a few cm of soft snow on top of a thin wind skin that wasn't noticable while skiing. Below that, 25 cm of settled snow sits on a 10 cm crust/frozen grains/crust sandwich. Early December surface hoar is down 80 cm and appears quite rounded and the crystals are starting to clump together. Generally dense, compacted snow down to ground, with some signs of old, rounding basal facets that didn't appear to be an avalanche problem in this location.