Kootenay

Saw a wet slab from a couple of days ago (it had 3cm of new snow on the debris from last night), HS-N-D2-R2. Went to the ground in this SW aspect.

2-10cm MFcr up to ~1550m decreasing with elevation. Facets below the crust to the ground until 1600m where a bit of a mid pack started to form. Snow improved with elevation, did a quick pit at 1950m in an open patch NE aspect. See snowpack tab for details. Skiing was great, ~20cm of F on a supportive midpack with good coverage of all the logs and stumps. Skiing drastically decreased once you hit the semi brakeable crust and quickly turned into survival skiing. Top 5cm were moist by 2:30 at 1400m.

Did a few yoyo laps on upper serac. -15 at car to start and by 1:30 was +6/7 at car. Breakable crust for bottom 150m, crust didn’t soften by the end. Upper east facing pitches (above 1500/1600m) the snow was un impacted despite sun and heat. Observed some debris in slide paths but didn’t witness any activity. Sun was certainly intense.

We saw remnants of a slide today at Serac down one of the north facing gullys. Looked like it happened some time this morning between our runs. We stayed stricly in the trees and had some nice turns. Wet snow on East and Southeast facing slopes up to 1950 m. Lots of solar radiation, even with temps hovering around -10C. Top 5 cm affected.

Good skiing! Morning 10 and 30 cm quick uptrack cut tests were stable, but once it began to warm up under the sun, these began to fail (around 15 cm deep). We stayed on angles 30° and less. It looked like a few of the upper chutes had some size ~1 releases probably from cornice failures recently. These ran around 30-50 m.

Lots of natural activity on south aspects through out the vermillion range some being cornice triggered other looked to be solar triggered, most went close to ground. A few of the roadside paths between Simpson and Floe had point releases that ran full path.

Skied the Simpson burn up to ~1900m. 10cm of new on a supportive mid pack higher but endless facets in the steeper rocky terrain. 5cm MFcr lower down on the surface and very punchy and grabby. 50cm at the road and lots of deadfall still showing but decent coverage after 1400m. No signs of instability but stuck to conservative terrain. Some evidence of small slides down the slide paths and through the cliff bands but nothing recent.

Avalanche control results from the Simpson area slidepaths. Conditions were not as touchy here as on Whymper, but still produced slabs with most shots. Generally, results were smaller than on Whymper, but still deep, just less propagation. The exception to this was a wide, deep slab on our Simpson 3 avalanche path that failed on a steep convex roll at treeline. This was ~ 80 cm deep and failed near the ground.

Went up to summit of Mt Vermilion and dropped into main face. Left earlier due to weather forecast. At 09:30 @ 2100m on N slope it was -4°C. Snow was dry on notherly aspects from 1600m up to summit. All other aspects had MFcr around 5cm thick which was supportive to skis until 1950m. We started descending around 12:30. Snow started to get moist around 2300m. Hasty pit @ 1900m on N aspect. Snowpack seemed well settled and right side up. No new avalanches observed throughout the day. Did see old debris from East facing fans. Was too far away to see what type of avalanche. Overall great day in the mountains, start early finish early!