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South Rockies
Beautiful sunny day in the Bull river today... Unfortunately we didn't get above the crust from the last few days of warm weather so the riding was hard crust to breakable crust. We found 50 cm of snow at 1600 m at our high point with a heavily facetted lower snowpack. We saw several wet loose avalanches from the previous days sun. Some of them went to ground because of how shallow and facetted the snowpack is in this area. No new avalanches today though. No wind, clear skies in the morning and increasing cloud this afternoon.
Only 5 cm of new snow in the Wildhorse area, but a few recent wind slab avalanches (size 2) triggered beneath cornices on northeast slopes. Typical snow depths around treeline was 150 cm. You could easily punch through the crusts beneath the new snow into wallowly facets when sledding and skinning, but skied surprisingly well.
Out at Lemon Lake today in the Bull River drainage, we skied a NW facing slope that doesn’t see much sun at this time of year, and enjoyed great, fast powder. We dug a hasty pit at 1600m, revealing a snowpack depth of 160 cm, with a strong crust 45 cm down. We had no significant snowpack test results, while the surface snow stayed dry with the temperature at -4. On the way in to our trailhead, we saw the debris of a Very Large avalanche (Size 3) out of an Alpine Bowl with East to South aspects in the start zone. Ran full path down into the Bull River. Probably a couple of days old, but difficult to say definitively. Note: the Bull River FSR is drivable from the dam for a couple of km but its very slick ice.
20 to 30 cm of new snow. 145 cm snow depth at 2200m. Did a compression test on a SE facing 30 degree slope. We got a CTM 10 down 45 cm. We had a great ski in open trees. Some wind transfer but no problematic wind slabs where we were. We avoided the alpine mainly due to visibility.
90 cm of snow on the ground meant for terrible travel conditions. We punched to ground repeatedly on our sleds and skis. Climbed to 2300 m and dug a pit where we found the November weak layer alive and well! It failed in out tests 50 cm deep so we carefully descended to our snowmobiles. The ice looked good from far though!
Point release avalanches on steep S facing slopes once warmed up. Snow quality on top of crust made for good skiing. No signs of instability on the N slopes skied today.
60cm snowpack. Faceted without support on the south facing aspects but other aspects had a supportive base with 10-15cm ski penetration for some good, careful turns!
Mixed bag of conditions depending on elevation. Saturday freezing level rose to 1900 m with snow melting and dripping off the trees below this. Between 1900 and 2200 m well consolidated upper snowpack with chalky ski quality. We only touched on the alpine and there was widespread stiff wind slab. Tree line and below was generally calm but strong winds in the alpine Sunday afternoon. Evidence of recent size 1 and 2 Na out of steep wind loaded E asp terrain
Skied up up Lakit and Maus Cr. this weekend and last. Approx 65-70cm at 2100m, except shallower on sun and wind exposed slopes. Pretty stiff and crunchy snowpack overall, but with a nice dusting on top. And because the snow is supportive, making turns in November feels less dangerous than normal.
Climbed up a SE aspect where there was 10 cm of moist snow over a supportive crust. Once at ridge top we poked around some cornices where there was hardly any new cornice only old, mature stuff. Which was massive... Chopped off a medium sized chunk to test the slope and watched it gouge deep but didn't pull any slab. The sluff it created ran far though and gained a lot of mass. Skied steep NE trees and had amazing turns with no signs of instability! Occasionally could feel the tails of skis breaking through the mid pack to the basement facets. Also there were size 1 wet loose from steep south facing alpine. Just within the recent storm snow.
Greetings from the west slope of the south Rockies. Went looking for an allusive stash of deep pow. Instead, found uniformly dense snow on sheltered NE thru SW aspects. Made me think that maybe the storm finished warmer on this side of the trench compared to what we observed yesterday in the Purcells. Many steep south and north facing paths had slide; some to mid runout, some further, but some not at all. Storm snow had a ski pen of 10cm. We didn’t observe any near surface instabilities. When the sun came out for any length of time it packed a bit more of a punch today, and the tree icicles were beginning to drip a bit at 2100m. Almost no wind. Backroads were like a skating rink.
Lots of signs of instability on our walk along the ridge towards Lakit Lookout. There was 20-30 cm heavy powder, you could hear loud wind in the alpine, we experienced lots of whumpfs, snowpack tests were showing an obvious weak layer 30 cm deep, we saw fresh avalanche debris from natural avalanches in the adjacent alpine bowl, and then while skinning along the ridge we remotely triggered two size 2 avalanches on some steeper terrain nearby. It was certainly a day for sticking to mellow terrain, which in our case meant skiing back down our skin track along the ridgetop.
We went up lakkit mountain. On the skin track up we had one large whoomph in an area where the snow was heavily sun affected and moist through the depth of the snowpack. We were unsure if the whoomphing was due to the temperature of the snowpack or due to a deep instability- so we dug a pit prior to our descent on the aspect we were planning to ski. When we dug our pit, we had snow depth of 1 m. The mid pack was pretty strong and seemed to be well bonded to the layers below. We saw a wind slab avalanche that had been triggered by a cornice collapse that was approx. 1 week old, and some more recent loose wet avalanches. The riding quality was variable: wet and heavy in sun affected areas and hard pack on the more north facing slopes that had not yet had much sun today. There was also new surface hoar forming on north facing slopes.
Snowpack does not inspire confidence in my opinion. The West side of the Southern Rockies region has been generally weaker than usual and not sure the snowpack has healed. Numerous crusts and facet layers on east and north aspects. This snowpack may share a similar problem to the Sparwood and Elkford area (deep hard to predict persistent slabs). The particular alpine bowl that we elected not to ski went full path and blew out new timber on December 26th so some areas may be shallow and rocky with little snow. Did not ski any steep alpine slopes as crust with facets layer with 40 cm of storm snow did not inspire confidence. Great skiing in low angle terrain - fast and flowy powder Large relatively recent estimated size 2.5 avalanche on southeast alpine face (Slide Creek). Ran for 700 m or so (2450 to 1750m). Sorry no photos as my phone battery died. Started in a deposit zone 100 metres below summit. Strong early afternoon solar radiation and could have been triggered by a cornice fall. Intense wind gusts blowing around tons of snow. Wind was depositing snow on south and west aspects (ie opposite of typical lee features).
Took the long ride in to Mt Harrison to check out a low snowpack area today...which we found in spades. 100 cm at 2025 m and the snowpack was heavily faceted. When we got off our sleds our boots punched pretty much to ground which was very different to the Mear lake area where the middle of the snowpack was supportive and well settled. The winds were blowing, moving snow around at all elevations from the SW. Our snowpack test showed in shallow areas that the early season facets at the bottom are still something to think about.
It has rained a few days before lots then refroze. 2” layer of ice crust up to 2700m where we turned around
Submitted for Eddie Petryshen: "We were up Mause Creek and Tanglefoot in the South Rockies. Surface hoar on both south and north aspects from 1850 to 2150 m. Smaller and less noticeable hoar as you climb in elevation. Only areas without it were either areas where it had melted out or areas with significant wind effected slopes where snow was bulletproof. Will be a major layer to watch but not sure if this surface is common in other areas right now. We didn't notice it up lil sand on saturday. Heavy winds in alpine over the last few days have built isolated wind slabs in north and northeast aspects. We triggered one of these. Skier was able to safely ski out but a scary moment near the bottom of a couloir at a cross loaded 35-38 degree slope where wind deposited snow built into a hard slab. 25-40 cm deep slab with a 50 m wide by 30 m vertical fracture line. Ran for 50 metres or so. We let many of the early season conditions we were seeing in other areas blur our judgement on that one." Geotag pin not exact location.
Spent the day north of Elkford in the Bull River area. We saw one size 2 in a cutblock on the Dec facet layer and a size 1.5 from a windloaded feature at treeline. The snowpack depth at 2000m is about 1 meter in this area but it sleds like more. The December facet layer is down 70cm, which continues to cause shooting cracks and whumpfing to occur.