The Oboe Apostles

Today we went up and skied Flute and Oboe. Our main runs were on the Upper Apostles on the backside of Oboe. The snow quality was good and overall felt pretty stable. At the top of the Apostles, we did a quick Extended Column Test (ECT) on the aspect that we were skiing (NE at 60 degrees, 1905 metres). Our pit was 90cm deep (we hit the ground) and mostly 4 fingers to fist density. Our ECT test results were: ECT N 14 Non-plainer at 25 cm from the surface and ECT P 19 Plainer on a mildly faceted crust at 70cm from the surface. This crust layer was pencil density. Other than that we felt pretty comfortable with the snowpack and had an enjoyable day skiing pow in the backcountry.

The weather today was a very mixed bag. In the morning it was sunny and calm with light wind. As the day went on, clouds started moving in and the winds picked up hugely. Later in the day as we were headed back to Flute and at the top of Flute, the wind picked up even stronger and it got pretty stormy and cold. That only lasted 20-30 minutes though because as we dropped into Flute the winds died a bit and it went back to just overcast. It later started snowing as we skied back down towards the village.

On our ECT test, the crust layer that slid off was at a compression of 19 taps (elbow). It looked strong until that hit when it immediately propagated and slid off completely smoothly. We had another smaller non-plainer result at 14 taps that didn't propagate and broke off in uneven pieces (non-plainer). This was from a weak wind slab that was starting to form.