Quick report
A Level 1 course with the Alaska Avalanche School spent the shortest (and perhaps one of the coldest) day of winter touring the Center Ridge and Tincan Backdoor trails. The layer of surface hoar has made travel quality slightly softer than earlier this week, but hard-packed conditions still made for very challenging skiing. We stayed below treeline and sought out locations for pits and rescue practice. Pits generally showed poor structure but high strength and low energy (although, a mid-snowpack melt-freeze crust was too thick to cut with an ECT cord.)