Wrapping up an AST 2 course at Dezaiko Lodge over the past 4 days, we have had excellent early winter skiing. We arrived after 50cm of storm snow last weekend, and had another 25cm yesterday. This came with very little wind, and falling temperatures in the -10c range. The current snowpack depth is 220cm at treeline on average. On the flight in on Tuesday, there was surprisingly few natural avalanches. Throughout the week, we started slowly, assessing conditions and found a few thin crusts from late November now down 100-120cm. We had to try really hard to identify, but there is very small hoarfrost embedded in the top crust. In several test profiles, this gave hard to no results in both Compression, and Extended Column Instability tests. Previous storm and windslabs produced a small size 1.5 purposely skier triggered avalanche early in the week Monday, but stabilized with warmer temperatures. Last night the temperatures began to fall, sitting around -15c now.
Our main concern is for recent windslabs, as we slowly stepped out in the terrain. Deeper instabilities dont appear to be problematic, but we also recognize we have only tested in a very small area, limited in extent to treeline on a North aspect in the immediate area.