Cold Feet

This week we've been finding the rain crust that was buried a week ago is now under 30-40 cm of snow! That’s a scary amount to have sitting on a crust. We skinned up through west facing trees today and didn't find any shooting cracks or whumpfs. It was only once we dug down to the crust and did some tests that it showed that once triggered it can fail and spread across a slope. This made our decision to stick to lower angle slopes that weren't wind loaded much easier.

Extended column test moderate with propagation across the column down 38 below the Dec 8 rain crust in facets. Snowpack was facetted the whole way through. Significant drifting from west winds (see photos)