Creekshank

We finally found signs of real winter on our trip to the Cruickshank/Castlecrag area today, but it was a wet one! We staged our sleds at 9km on the East Fork, but steady rain melted out much of the road coverage over the day. Things will look different tomorrow. Rain switched to a rain/snow mix at about 1300 m and to snowflakes at about 1400 m. At our 1480 m high point, we found about 15 cm of soft but moist new snow covering another 15 cm of rain soaked snow on a thin crust. The only snowpack test that revealed any instability was a shovel shear test. The top 30 cm slid quite readily off the crust with an easy shovel pull. This was some of the heaviest, wettest, powder at least one of us had ever skied through. Very slow going on the up and the down. As we crossed steeper slopes, giant pinwheel rollerballs would pop out of our track and careen downhill. We saw small amounts of natural wet loose debris as we scanned some of the steepest terrain around.