Quick report
On Mon morning, went out to Ball to play around in the new snow on the pow surfers. Holy whooped out sled road!! (edit: apparently it was groomed later that day, hope so as it was pretty brutal) It was pretty windy from the SW and starting to snow. Seemed like about a foot of new snow in the lower part of the E bowl which is what we stuck to. Pretty much zero vis (see pics) so didn’t stick around too long, and didn’t get into anything too steep. New snow was somewhat heavy and did seem to be bonding pretty well to the old crust from the little I could see. In the afternoon I went over to check out Kwolh. Sled trail there gets a little sporty at the end but was actually less whooped out than trail 8 to Moon. Snow quality in the trees was great, and above near the ridge was good too and seemed not overly wind-affected till right at the ridge, where it was somewhat wind-stripped. Due to low vis and new snow I decided to come down near my skin track in the trees, as the vis was better and I knew the snow was good there. This is where my PSA comes in. WATCH OUT FOR LAVA HOLES!!! I was just following the good snow/vis and don’t normally descend that way, and I ended up suddenly falling into one of those holes, it all happened in an instant, like falling into a tree well. If I was strapped into a regular snowboard I probably could have jumped over the hole, but I was on the pow surfer, and it just shot out like a banana peel, and I was headfirst into the hole. Got REALLY lucky and walked away with “just” a bashed helmet. This is another one of those things that isn’t normally as much of an issue at this point in the season, but is still a problem due to the low coverage. Careful out there! See linked video for reference.