Excellent mid winter ski camp in Nirvana Pass

Mountain Conditions Report

<p>I just finished a week long ski camp at Nirvana Pass. We had excellent mid winter conditions.</p> <p>The day before we flew in there was a storm that deposited 30 cm of new snow with little wind (March 8). This bonded quickly to the previous surfaces. We had a skier triggered avalanche on the first day, a size 1.5 on a 42° E facing slope, caused by a small 30 cm deep slab that was cut out between tracks near ridgetop, no propagation, which then entrained a sluff that ran 100 m and stopped mid track. Apart from that there was no other reactivity to skier traffic all week. We skied steep open alpine slopes to 45° throughout the week. </p> <p>Our main concerns were at the beginning of the week, with Moderate Alpine hazard: isolated ridgetop windslabs on East aspects (to size 1.5) as well as afternoon warming creating loose wet hazard on solar aspects to size 2. But after Sunday's warm up (+4 at 1750m) hazard quickly lowered back to Low at all elevations on Tuesday and Wednesday.</p> <p>Snowpack was 220 cm at our treeline camp elevation (1780 m) and 300-320 cm on the glaciers. In the many wind exposed areas in the alpine the snowpack was considerably thinner. The local heli ski operation was cautioning about a facet/crust Persistent Weak Layer down 40-80 cm in low snowpack areas. We did find this easily but it appears to be solidly bridged by hard (pencil to knife hardness) snow and was not reactive to testing.</p> <p>Last night we had a bit of a refresh with 3 cm low density powder snow and today was blue skies and sunshine for the flight out. Thank you Nirvana!!!</p> <p>Regards,<br /> Tom Wolfe<br /> Mountain Guide ACMG/IFMGA</p>