Cracked the Oyster

It was a beautiful day for our first successful mission of the year through the cutblocks to Beadnell Lake today. We found 10 cm of angel fluff resting on another 55 cm of soft, sugary snow from not-so-recent storms sitting on a firm crust. Our snowpack tests could produce a sudden 'cash register' result of the soft snow sliding off the crust, but only after some really hard thumps. A second snowpack test showed that this failure would not propagate across a 90 cm wide block. We noticed light wind transport of loose snow in open below treeline terrain, filling in our tracks from earlier in the day. Very cool to see some recent ski touring tracks in the area too! Wind effect was visible on alpine slopes, though we didn't have time to investigate after a tricky meander through the still very stumpy cutblocks. All A-arms made it home safe!