The Mark of Zeerip

Today we sled-skied near Terrace and experienced strong southwesterly winds and continued light snow throughout the day. We didn’t see any new avalanches but as we neared ridgecrest and open areas in the treeline we were able to get shooting cracks 15 cm deep. We dug at 1200 m on a west facing slope and found 350 cm total snow depth. We were able to produce compression test results 40 cm with moderate loading steps that progressively compressed underneath the shovel blade. The January 28 rain crust is 165 cm deep showing just how much storm snow we have had in the last few weeks! There are some small facets above the rain crust but we did not get any results on this layer. There is another rain crust from during the storm cycle last week that exists up to 950 m. It is breakable makes travel and skiing/riding below this elevation quite challenging.