A tale of two mountains - Yukon Field Team

The field team went up into the alpine to the SE aspect of Taiya Peak. Our goal was to assess the extent and reactivity of windslab and to look at the reactivity of the dec 11th PWL. And what we found was… TL: Storm snow appears to be widely non-wind affected We were still breaking trail in unsupportive storm snow. There were many hidden hazards - rocks, tree wells and open creeks. We saw a lot of sled traffic and happy sledders in the Bryant lake zone. The best ski quality was at this elevation! Alp: Entering the alpine we experienced moderate northern outflow winds. What we experienced in the field was different from the local telemetry / weather data used in planning our day. We experienced north winds with active snow transport forming windslab that was at times reactive (whumpfing / shooting cracks) our skin tracks had filled in / eroded before end of day. Cornice features are growing and sastrugi is prevalent across the alpine. Snow depth and quality remains highly variable on east aspects. HS 85 - 115cm with lots of hidden rocks and hazards. A “quick" snowprofile at 1600m on SE aspect of Taiya peak provided some snowpack data. Slope angle 23 degrees.(see profile) There was a lot of HS variability on this aspect. Some crystal types are missing due to loosing visibility at the end of day along with the feeling in our hands. We opted for safe travel over data. Of note is the result of the compression test - this was a fairly fat sheltered slope amongst wind stripped terrain features. Overall a good day's ski touring with great views. Great day to move through the mountains and cover a lot of terrain. It was more of a walk than a ski and good to get an overview of early season conditions in the alpine. Using wisdom gained on the skin track, on our descent in the alpine we choose the conservative and style-less downhill traverse technique to minimize committing to a turn and hitting rocks - still we left some P-tex on the mountain! Thanks for all the Min posts it helps us identify areas to look at during field days!