Alpine in the Sun

There was an inversion today in Tommy Creek. While it was -9°C at the truck, it was only -2°C with sunshine and no wind in the alpine. The day started cloudy, but cleared off to a blue blazer by the early afternoon. The new crust is thin and breakable up to 2200 m. It sits on 15 cm of softer snow over a firm upper snowpack that made for go anywhere travel. We took advantage of the “hero snow” and spent the day in the alpine peaking over ridge lines and linking up passes. A new batch of surface hoar is growing over the crust on all aspects and elevations. It ranges from 3-4 mm in the open alpine to 10-13 mm in the cutblocks and sheltered openings below treeline around the cabin. We saw one cornice fall from a distance that triggered what looked to be a size 2.5 avalanche. It was on a northeast facing alpine slope and ran around 350 m. We couldn’t get close enough to figure out how recent it was, or get a good picture though. There were sled tracks into lots of big slopes and wind loaded pockets, but we didn’t see any other signs of recent avalanche activity.