STS Couloir

Did an afternoon lap in STS Couloir. HST from 5cm to 15cm in the alpine. On the way up Balu Pass, we spotted a skier triggering a soft wind slab (Sz 1, 40m x 10-20cm, 2100m, NE, immediate lee of Balu Pass) probably formed overnight by the S/SW winds. Even if it had a defined crown, the slab was so soft that it broke into sluff on the way down, running halfway down the slope (100m). We ascended the Cheops W ridge towards the couloir, making way through wind-affected snow laid on a knife-hard solar crust. The cornice at the entrance of STS couloir is now quite sizable. We tunneled through it for the next party to have an easier time. Watch out for the precarious chunk skier's right (broken off from the above cornice) that's somehow still clinging to the rock slab below. All we experienced in the couloir was some fast sluffing on the HST and very minor cracking. We avoided the slabby looking skier's left.