Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Walking up the base of the gully we saw a mixture of icy crust and some drifts. Once we reached the point when the gully began to get steeper we observed some smaller wind slabs in isolated areas however when we tested the snow with hand shears or whacking with poles we saw minor cracking and no propagation. When the gully opened up we stopped to dig a pit about 80 cm deep pictured here, the top layer being an ice crust and the following being about pen hardness. Our ECT test did not fail on the icy pit, but a pit dug in a wind slab could give a different result. When pulled away, the 1 finger hardness and 4 finger hardness layers had a clean slide. While we were confident in the conditions to climb the entire gully, the cold made us turn around early. When skiing down one of us fell on the extremely dense wind slab, resulting in some cracking but no propagation or any sliding downhill.