Miners

Miners looked white from town, so we decided to go up for a lap and see how conditions have changed since the big cycle. Lots of new snow on the Ha Ling trail, average boot pen on the upper half of the trail was knee deep as we broke trail up. Consistent moderate to strong southwesterly wind at ridgetop with light wind transport. Recent debris from a few size 1-1.5s out of extreme windloaded terrain, looking to have been cornice triggered and mostly running loose. A belayed ski cut at the top of the line produced cracking up to 1m off the ski in the immediate lee and loose dry entrainment in the top 10cm, slab property to the new snow quickly tapered below the top few meters. A couple hasty pits in the upper 50m of the slope showed 50-80cm right side up fist to 4-finger snow on top of the March 20th raincrust, 3cm thick, pencil resistance. Hand shears produced resistant breaks just above the crust. Around 2250m the crust became pretty bulletproof Deep powder skiing conditions on the upper section of the line and in the bowl as long as you stay off the avy debris. As you'd expect, the lower bowl and canyon were rough, but we were able to (survival) ski all the way to Quarry lake. Feels like early November skiing BTL. Tons of rocks to hit, and lots of icy avalanche debris to pick your way through. Debris ran just past the first rappel and filled it in so that it is now sidesteppable on skis. We only had to use the rope for one short rap near the bottom.