North Monashee

Approx 30cm of powder on the trail in. Low visibility so stayed at tree line and below. Pretty mellow slopes and/bowls and trees. Probe test at 1776m showed depth of 235cm. Poke test. Snow started to firm up at the 200cm mark. A bit weak between 200cm and 180cm. Most definitely tracked out today.

Rode treeline and below today. Approx 60cm of fresh powder. Dug a quick hole 60cm hole below treeline to see snowpack. Poking of the wall showed 2ft of soft layers then firmed up at about 50cm. Observed lots of wind cross loading on the alpine therefore stayed away from those slopes. Felt one whumpf all day at treeline. Snowpack depth at 1891m was 175cm.

We went up Finn creek to Groundhog east today. Lots of previous wind effect on the exposed ridgetops and you could likely find small wind slabs if you went looking for them but they may be stubborn to trigger. We were hunting for the recently reactive layer of surface hoar that was buried late January. We found it on both north and south aspects at treeline and upper elevations of below treeline. Where we looked, it was down 40-70 cm. but hard to spot in the profile wall and none of our snowpack tests produced any notable results. That said, the reactivity of this layer has varied greatly throughout the region and there are many locations, especially at treeline, that I would think twice before jumping into big terrain.

Riding Conditions today were excellent! Waist deep fresh snow. It was very warm but remained below freezing at riding elevation (1500m+) Yesterday we observed whumpfing around 1500m in a partially open meadow. Today we observed many natural avalanches size 1-2 on all aspects between 1500-1800m elevation. Appeared to be just the storm snow sliding. No evidence of step downs.

We rode Red sands, heard lots of whumpfing, saw a 1.5 on a convex roll, south east aspect with the last 24 hours. Dug full pit to ground @1600m south east aspect 140cm, easy sheer hand test on unconsolidated storm snow 20cm, compression test moderate 13 to 95cm, broken, rotten facets.

Sledding at Hill Climb and Goat ridge areas. No avalanche activity observed. Significant temperature rise through the day to above zero in the ALP in the afternoon and very warm in the valley. Snow quality was very good, no slab formation noted. Stuck to conservative terrain due to warming trend.

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