Maligne

Great day skiing at Bald Hills. Around 0 at the car at 11am and likely -3ish at the top with a chilly wind. Cloudy with some sun peaking out, especially in the morning. Road up was broken in and easy going with quick travel possible on hardpack. Way down was fast and fun as long as you stuck to the broken trail. The snow on the side was wet and slow. Above 2000m on polar aspects the snow was amazing, felt like riding butter. About 20-40cm of dry snow (depending on wind loading) was overlying a supportive crust or other layers. On solar aspects the crust was not supportive and you plunged through into waist deep sugar. Didn’t see any signs of naturals or any instabilities. Did travel across some wind slabs in the alpine on flat ground and noticed that there was lots of wind activity on the steeper slopes. Skied nothing but mellow terrain.

Skied the Lovat Scout to Bald Hills loop sticking to mellow slopes in treeline. Solar aspects had 2-3cm of new snow on top of a 2cm breakble sun crust. We didnt venture into the alpine but it looked slightly wind affected especially at ridgecrest. Sheltered slopes offered some great skiing and we found it reasonably supportive. Lots of convective flurries throughout the day and the air temperature stayed around -5 for most of the day. No natural avalanche activity observed.

Day out in the Watchtower area. Good skiing TL and BTL where supportive to skis. Alpine ranged from bullet hard sastrugi to soft WSL. BTL, sparse trees and rocky areas made for awful trail breaking with PS to ground through FC and DH, improving at around 1900m.

Bottom 40cm of column was depth hoar, sitting on a 5cm hard layer. Dug two pits in low angle terrain (15 degrees), both of which failed immediately 30cm from the surface. After failing at 30cm, the whole column broke unevenly at 2 elbow strikes. Massive windloading in the alpine, from southern aspects onto northern aspects. A few small naturals (0.5) on steep SW aspects. Decided not to ski anything, great scenery for a fitness lap.

Surprisingly good skiing considering the warm temperatures. We skied from a bit above treeline towards the peak and down to the fire road. We took the shortcut route up and down. Near the top was increasingly more wind affected so we decided to go down after digging a pit just above treeline. Windblown snow created a soft surface about 10-20 cm on some leeward faces. The first weak layer was about 30cm and another at 70cm during our column test. The remaining 50cm unsupported by basal facets. To be cautious, we stuck close to the trees and avoided steep slopes.

Great skiing at buck lake. ~20cms of new snow on top of a surprisingly supportive midpack. Lots of other traffic over the last few days. Great skin track to around 2000m. Triggered a small pocket (hardly a size 1) on a small convexity at treeline.

Facets to the ground with about 5cm layer from recent storm. Facets made for difficult trailbreaking in the trees. A buried sun crust in the avalanche path kept it supportive to skis and surprisingly decent quality. There is a different skin track from an earlier group that takes you a bit further left .... our down track/survival skiing out would be the more direct route. (Right on approach)