When life gives you rain, ride Coal Creek (or maybe not...)

Today we headed up Coal Creek to assess the impact of the rain and elevated freezing level. It rained all morning, saturating what little remains of the snowpack at lower elevations. The first few km of the trail is mostly bare ground. At 2200 m we got an air temperature of 2.5 °C, the upper snowpack was moist and settling rapidly at this elevation. We observed some cornices that likely failed during the storm Sunday night/Monday morning. However, there are still plenty of large, overhanging cornices left out there. The riding quality was poor, and combined with the elevated avalanche hazard, there is no good reason to venture into avalanche terrain currently.