Ten Mile South Side

Skied the south side slopes in the back of the Ten Mile Pond drainage. Originally planned on a couloir feature with a northeast facing entrance so dug a quick pit on a representative slope above treeline at approximately 500m. Found two ice-crusts at about 80cm and 90cm. Our first Extended Column Test showed a medium-hard failure with no propagation (ECTN17) at about 20cm. We conducted a second ECT after removing the top 50cm of snow to see if we could get a result on the ice crusts. Found similar results (ECTN18) on the upper crust. Both tests showed resistant planer fracture characteristics. Snow seemed to be settling nicely where we were based on the test results and lack of other signs of instability (no woomphing or failures on micro-features). Unfortunately, our line didn’t work out for other reasons so we ended up skiing the west-facing, mellow trees that we had skinned up through. The snow was dry and cold for the morning but started to get damp and heavy in the afternoon. Some snowballing was observed on steep, sunny slopes.