Whumpfs and Hoar

bvandy , Sunday 26th January, 2025 9:15AM

Went for an adventure slog into some new zones, cold clear weather has started forming surface hoar up to 30mm-40mm on all aspects above 1600m—1950m, and smaller SH to valley bottom averaging 4-9mm which did provide some great turns but will have to be watched once buried. On ridge line the wind affect was surprisingly minimal but we observed a few whumpfs on west aspects where the snow was starting to form a more cohesive slabs and hand shears showed planar results 20cm down on the Jan.23 SH. For north and east aspects the new snow was still lacking slab properties, but we had CT-24 SP down 90cm and ECT-X at 1700m N aspect. We rode some more open trees into a gully down a NE aspect and got great turns right from 1950m back to 800m with no movement except the large SH sloughing.

Early January SH layer had no reaction, the planar break down at 90cm may be the early December SH layer.