Cougar Creek East

Monster day for parking in the pass, but had the run to ourselves! Dug a pit and found the Jan 26 surface hoar 55 cm down. Based on the results, we skied the run but chose to avoid the more open and convex area skier's left in favour of the more supported and treed area at skier's right. No signs of instability on this layer during the descent. Great powder up top, on the bottom half a more shallow crust was present that could be felt but still good ski quality. Some amount of loose snow movement on top of this crust.

Dug a hasty pit to just below the Jan 26 surface hoar layer, 55 cm down and ~1 cm thick. The snow above this had no discernable layers and progressively increased in density with depth. Test results: CTH27 down 55, SP ECTP22 on the same layer (only used a ~50 cm wide column) It required a fair amount of effort for a skier stomping on top of the pit to get this layer to release. We felt that human triggering would not be likely except in very unsupported terrain.