Selkirks-Priest Lake

The signs were obvious heading up the road that things were to be as expected...a bit spicy. The steep banks along the road had some nice natural slides down to the road, most of which were caused by tree bombs., a couple from my machine. Propagation in many went for a hundred plus feet horizontally. I parked at about 5200'. There was a light rain crust on top of the new 15" or so of snow as I toured up towards the ridge line on a westerly face, through the trees. A few hand shears showed that below the surface rain crust it was 4F down about 10" to another thin crust that was the culprit. Fist fulls of sugar snow below that gave it no support. At about 5800' the snow started to become quite noisy with loud whoomphs and zipper ripping propagations. On days like this it is imperative to stay on slopes less than 30 degrees, using whatever tool you might have. I literally had cracks surrounding me at times, with the ground dropping with some of the whoomphs. While a bit unnerving, I was positive I knew what was above and below me at all times. I dug a quick pit at about 6400' coming down on my first run. I only dug 41" down as it was beginning to feel like a coffin. From the surface down: 1" new, 1/8-1/4" rain crust;@10" of 4F to a 1/4" crust (WEAK layer);Then F/4F to 23" and another 1/4" crust; then F/4F down to 33" with a 1" crust in a rotten snow sandwich. CT9 @10", CT 22@23". The snow skied well even with the upper zipper crust. Normal sluffing off of turns. Skied a couple of WNW facing tree runs. Weather was mostly cloudy with a couple of hours of snow and some clearing late in the afternoon. Light winds.

Quick report