Birdwood Smuts Traverse

It was a beautiful tour with great views and calm winds. We started the day at -18 degrees C and had a temperature inversion throughout the day. We skied through a variety of surfaces between 1850-2450m. The upper 10-20cm was mainly comprised of low density snow which was rapidly settling on solar aspects. We also experienced wind affected surfaces, wind scoured rock cols, and found faceted snow and surface hoar to size 2. Below all of this, a denser supportive layer and facets to ground. No cracking or whumpfing today. However, there was evidence of slab avalanches to size 3, some with wide propagation. It was hard to determine how old these avalanches were. More recently, new solar induced point releases and avalanches to size 2 were observed on steep alpine terrain.