Nak, Snack, and Back

Skinned up Nak shoulder to the Nak-Yak col and then Nak summit. On the way up, we saw signs of wind from the E last night, consistent with weather station data. The storm snow from last night was moderately wind affected and there were warmer temps and more sunshine than expected - this led to easy cracking in the surface snow, especially above buried firm wind slabs in places. Hand shears in hasty pits gave resistant planar results about 40cm deep on the old crust interface. At the entrance to the north bowl from the col, there was no cornice there yet but we did not drop in due to the presence of a thick windslab at the entrance. We chose to ride mellow open trees and steeper anchored slopes. Riding quality was good above 1500m but the lower trees down to the pipeline road had heavy snow with a breakable crust forming, and alders galore.