Tutshi

Warm wet day following the pretty recent snow dump, had a localized whump on the up track, and found a small skier triggered avalanche, likely from yesterday. Wind effect at higher elevations, to beautiful powder, and wet heavy melting snow near the bottom. Avoided and/or cut the top of convexities prior to skiing under them with no results. Just about spring t shirt skiing!

Great, cold day skiing around Paddy's Peak. Conditions were very variable, with deep powder down low in the trees, to super hard wind affected snow. We did find reactive wind slabs on our way up, but nothing seemed to be propagating. An ECT test didn't yield any results, but we did notice some layer movement on the buried hoar frost layers. Pit was on a NNE aspect, 35° slope at 1120m. Snow depth was 150cm

Expectations were low as we left the whitepass this morning with moderate winds out of the north and poor visibility. Our drive inland was rewarded with better visibility, a bit less wind, and some surprisingly sheltered riding. We dug a pit and found 2 prominent layers down 55 and 73 cm on an east aspect at 1350m. Tests on an extended column test where hard but propagated the whole block with quite a lot of energy. Our persistent layer is definitely present out here! We saw some natural windslab avalanches from the alpine terrain but some were large enough to make it into the trees. We stuck to areas sheltered from the wind by trees and terrain, without large slopes above where there was some great snow to be had!

Dig a pit at 1400m S/Se aspect angle 26. Persistant weak layer at 55cms and wind slab formed on top. Total snow pack 240cms. Column test: E6 partial collapse at 10cms, likely wind slab. E8 planar collapse at 30 and 40 Cms with another, both triggered. H2 planar collapse at 55cms- weak persistant layer. Based on our results we stuck to conservative skiing and had some fun in the sun/wind.

Powder Valley lived up to its name! 30 cm of powder has added up from the past 2 storms. It was snowing steady all day and this storm has given us 20 new snow. Visibility was poor, it has warmed up to -7 C and calm, we were surprised by the lack of wind today. We sledded up into where the valley opens up at treeline and found amazing deep powder riding. A profile at lower elevation around 1150 m on an East aspect: we found 120 cm snow depth with 45 cm soft snow on the Jan 25 crust and another down crust down 80 cm. Both weak layers had surface hoar associated with the crust. As expected in this shallower snowpack there is weak sugary snow at the base. At higher elevations the snowpack is deeper and there is a firm wind slab buried under the newest snow.

Windy and warm. Snow was ok higher up but becoming chunky as the day warmed. Lower elevations we encountered heavy snowball snow. Higher elevations were wind affected with considerable buildup in lee areas.

Trail into powder valley was actually pretty good. Rode valley and into the alpine on lookers right. Snow was pretty soft and deep. Still was a bit tricky on sleds due to soft base. Was great skiing in the alpine.

Thin surface crust at valley floor/river flats, as soon as we got into the tree and onto north facing slopes the crust quickly disappeared. The main slope had zero crust present. Great powder with good base. Only light wind at top, some intermittent light precip. Great day.

Great conditions. Fair bit of willow still poking out but easily dodged. Powder with a good base. No signs of instability, zero wind effect.

Fun day of skiing the chutes but it still feels like an early season snow pack. Below tree line the snowpack is fairly well consolidated and about 80cm - 100cm deep. Still shallow enough for some awesome alder bashing and down tree hoping. Skin track is surprisingly in ok shape still (if you stick to the main one). At tree line and above it has been wind hammered first from the south and as of the 30th from the north. Exposed ridges are pullet proof crush and scoured down to less than 20cm. There are pockets that have been filled in a bit better and not as affected so choose your line carefully to avoid the sharks. At ground level in the alpine there seems to be wide spread facets, at least 5cm deep, often more like 20cm, and up to 2mm in size.

no new snow in this area in a little while. Was pretty hard packed and top layer of think ice everywhere. Pretty wind effected.

Skied a couple runs on SW facing slope E of the old road. Dug a quick pit an identified surface layer ~35cm on top of sugary faceted snow, non reactive. This layer was more shallow in areas nearby. -10 at highway, reached approx -2 around 1pm at 1100m. Warm temps and sunny slopes made for very sticky snow with difficult uphill travel. No wind today or recent loading observed.

Skied a loop some of us had been talking about for a while. Ended up skiing the steep part coming down from the col with a rope out in front of us since we couldn't see beyond our ski tips. Highly recommended on clear days. Encountered some small whumps on isolated wind slabs on flat ground. nothing on the alpine slopes appeared reactive though the wind slabs are there. More prevalent on east/northeast slopes. Released a very small wind slab with an aggressive ski cut on a steep feature just below treeline on the ski out... the possibility is there.

It's ready to ski. Snow is unconsolidated which makes for some effort hiking but overall good skiing. Skied some North facing runs down towards Tutshi lake and West facing down towards the road. No whumfing.

Skied east facing slopes off Paddy’s today. Approached the long way around via old road and climbing to ridge line on north facing slopes. North facing slopes had some soft snow below tree line, but otherwise were a mix of hard surfaces and scoured areas (some almost to ground surface). Turns down the east side were challenging, with a mix surfaces including hard slab at ridge top and a variety of crusts as we worked our way down, but no signs of instability. Warm temps seem to have affected snow surface below ~1000m. Alder bashing required to climb back out to the old mine road.

We had some nice, but short, powder laps in the trees. Above that, we encountered wind slab with much less new snow on top. A quick pit at treeline showed about 120cm snowpack with mostly sugary faceted snow at the base, under a decomposing crust (4 fingers), with the new storm snow on top of that. Northerly wind only started to pick up towards the end of the day.

Good skiing and tricky travel - we picked our way up an E facing av. path and had to use a combo of crampons and bootpacking; the loose, wet snow is keen to stick to skins, but zero adhesion to the crust beneath. Skiing back down was generally good, with the 5cm of wet snow damping the hard snow beneath. At 1000m (ish) the snow became abruptly sticky and ski quality was poor. By 2pm the light snow of the AM had turned to light rain, which made for good skiing back to the road. Extensive avalanche activity from the rocks is limited to loose wet sz1. Ski cutting yielded significant entrainment, and at one point a small slab of storm snow, which ran far for its diminutive size.

Went for a long walk to take a look at a steep north facing line in the Paddy Peak area. Encountered just about everything on the way in, including sun crust & strange pockets of isolated crust on bottomless facets low down on north aspects. For the most part there is lots of dry powder out there on - ski penentration 20-30cm on north aspects. Flurries continued most of the day - up to S2 before noon - and we definitely didn't get the clearing trend we'd been expecting. Zero wind and very little visibility - but just enough of a sucker hole to drag us all the way back to Paddy. Temperatures started at -5 but did hit 0 around midday and there was a warm greenhouse effect in the alpine with bright sun poking through heavy cloud cover and no wind. Our steep north facing line was hard to get up into- we'd anticipated a more consolidated base but found bottomless wallowing on the boot pack, briefly switching to a somewhat more supportive base in the couloir itself, but it was still slow going. About a third of the way up we started noticing pockets of thin unreactive windslab, which quickly turned into reactive warm slab / wind slab as we climbed. This slab was 40cm deep, 4f harness, overlayed an old decomposing crust and was reactive to skis. We aborted at 1800m & skiied down carefully followed by a concerning amount of sluff in this steep exposed terrain. Natural loose dry sluffing was seen too. A line for another day. The ski out was fun powder in open trees.

Riding quality was on the high end of good. Possibly great, but not amazing. Found good snow, 15-20cm of fresh snow on top of supportive slab unaffected by the sun on NASP of Paddys Peak. At 1350m exiting TL snow was wind affected. We did observe fairly new avalanche debris in the avalanche path BBQer's (lookers) right of where we skinned up. Visibility was too poor to get any more details of size and or start zone. However it looked from a distance to be fairly recent.

Snow stayed dry and temps below zero through the day in Powder Valley where it was calm and snowing. Great fast skiing.

Fun skiing on Paddy East. Skied the wide couloir draining the cirque on the north side of the peak. Soft but supportive snow all the way up. New wind slabs tested were unreactive. Not much active wind transport despite strong southerly gusts between calm. Compression test at the top of the couloir gave moderate results at ~15 cm (5 whacks from the elbow), stubborn hand/shovel shear testing. Spring conditions below treeline by afternoon, heavy snow, pinwheels, etc. A few small point releases from sun exposed rocks. Small rockfall from the highway cutslopes on the drive home.

Sledded into the backside of Paddy Peak. Trail in has some off camber sections (makes it harder if you’re doubling). Day started out with low clouds, which broke off around 11am and became a clear blue bird calm sunny afternoon. 15-20cm of fresh snow. No recent natural avy’s were observed in the area on any aspect. Some older debris was observed on north aspects. HS 80cm (~1700m at the col taken @ 2:15pm on North aspect). -11.5 with light winds from the SW.

Skied in avalanche paths which had 30cm fresh wind packed snow on a hard surface but snow was bonding well, no obvious signs of instability where we were...... good fun. Many of the avalanche paths in the area had recently released (within 24 hours) but not from the top of the slide path but about halfway down, only one release could be confirmed to be a slab release. Some were pretty big slides, size 2.5 or so. Very windy from the south, lots of snow transport happening.

Recent natural avalanches around Paddy Peak north east aspects. Lots of evidence of older avalanches from this season running all the way to valley bottom, but the those observed today did not go full path. Around 10cm new snow and moderate to strong winds steady throughout the day that seemed to wrap around and touch many but not all aspects and features.

AST2 crew skied a number of the Paddy East avalanche paths today and variability was the word of the day. We found everything from bomber, can't buy an avalanche snowpack in some places to spookiness in others. In a steep upper tree line path, we found a slab sitting on a thick layer of facets that produced sheers in test profiles (ECTP12 down 50cm). In another path we created a large whumpf and slope scale shooting cracks. Further investigation found this failure had occurred on large preserved surface hoar crystals that formed a number of weeks back. This failure would have certainly created an avalanche in steeper terrain. Skiing was surprisingly good after the nuclear norths winds the day before.

We headed to the now well-travelled Paddy Peak area in search of steep skiing and killer views. We found both. Of note was widespread SH development to size 10mm up to lower alpine elevations. This could be interesting if buried this week. We skied big terrain today with confidence and observed no signs of instability. Old wind slab was unreactive. There is now up to 15cm of unconsolidated facets on the surface this could also become a layer of concern when buried.

We found good riding on South side of East facing ridges. Recent North winds deposited some good snow into these areas. When we tried skinning up a more North aspect we found widespread wind slabs at about 1300m. It made skinning quite difficult and the riding quality was poor. Once we worked are way to the South aspects we were able to skin up to 1600m quite comfortably. Above 1600m wind slabs were quite prevalent on all aspects so we turned around. Day was -30 at road level and -16 at 1300m. Clear skies all day. Light south wind. Photo is when we pulled the plug at 1600m. There was about a 5cm crust that was breaking away, underneath that was a rock solid old slab that without ski crampons was pretty impossible to skin on. Still from this point we enjoyed 700m or so of great skiing!

We headed inland today for a ski tour in the paddy peak zone. The inversion continues, with -27c in the valley and -15c in the alpine. We had clear skies, no wind and the sun was out and packing a punch. We left the valley in down jackets and were shedding layers pretty quickly. In sheltered features, 10cm of low density snow covers old wind pressed surfaces. The skiing is variable and a mixture of powder on wind pressed surfaces or wind pressed with no powder. Old avalanche debris is softening nicely. Boot packing steeper tree line features it is still possible to punch through the wind packed snow and wallow in sugary facets. We were comfy stepping out into more committing terrain features today and testing steeper features produced no signs of instability. Despite the low temps, the skiing is still really good in sheltered areas.

We spent some time in a zone that's getting some love this year. The gullies above Tutshi Lake. Lots of snow and big avalanches that have extended runs well down into treeline have, well...made it skiable. No big surprises, heavily wind affected above 1300m with stubborn wind slabs abound. Skiing is soft but grippy below. Signs of natural wind slab avalanche up to 48hrs old now. We chose to park in the chain-up area to the south rather than on the road to make life a little easier for our snow removal operator and trucker friends out here. It added about 45min to our day.

All the avi chutes had run but the skiing was surprisingly good on the debris which was soft and covered by 10 cm of fresh snow. Along the sides where the wind had not affected the snow and there was no debris there was nice powder. We stayed below 1100 m. Mild only -9 all day and no wind good visibility all day even though there was fog and low cloud off the lake. Tutshi lake is almost frozen now.

Top 15cm was turning to a soft slab that popped and dropped slightly at third wrist tap. 2 layers popped but did not drop at same time on third tap from elbow, on degenerating facets, at 25 cm and 31cm. See photos. -3 degrees, no wind. No cracks or avy signs while skinning. Great riding if you avoided the tracks put in yesterday. Watch for alder javelins the avalanche that created this left behind

15cm storm snow in the area since Saturday. Low density with minimal wind effect at and below treeline. It has fallen on top of previous low density snow to make for deep powder turns. In the lower alpine it has been slightly affected by the wind, but was unreactive on the terrain we skied. We did get shooting cracks in the storm snow while skinning up a small feature below treeline that was extremely steep. We skied steep slopes in open trees and planar open slopes. The wind picked up towards late afternoon and localized strong to extreme gusts were redistributing the snow in all directions in the valley. Ridgetop southerly winds also picked up in the afternoon causing rapid snow transport and redistribution at ridgetop.

15cm storm snow in the area since Saturday. Low density with minimal wind effect at and below treeline. It has fallen on top of previous low density snow to make for deep powder turns. In the lower alpine it has been slightly affected by the wind, but was unreactive on the terrain we skied. We did get shooting cracks in the storm snow while skinning up a small feature below treeline that was extremely steep. We skied steep slopes in open trees and planar open slopes. The wind picked up towards late afternoon and localized strong to extreme gusts were redistributing the snow in all directions in the valley. Ridgetop southerly winds also picked up in the afternoon causing rapid snow transport and redistribution at ridgetop.

A great day skiing terrain that hasn't looked appealing for a few years. Weather was a mix of high overcast and scattered cloud, temperatures warm and consistent, winds calm, zero precip. We chose to explore an east facing path, and were rewarded with good skiing (snow consistent quality, though heavier than yesterday) from the alpine to the road. No signs of instability or significant wind transport. There is a crust buried 20cm-1m in the area skied, not really detectable when skiing/skinning, but could easily be pushed through with a pole. We did not investigate the bond to this crust. Isolated hand shears revealed a very soft slab (4F-) in some places, with a depth of approximately 20cm. White Pass continues to deliver an unseasonably deep snowpack, quality skiing, good visibility, and mild temperatures. 2021 is shaping up to be a weird year ;-)

Past MIN reports said it has been busy in the Tutshi Chutes. Today was too as we saw over 15 people and a bumpin parking lot when we finished. Temps were almost too warm haha. Roughly -3. Winds were calm in the morning, light N winds at the summit on the second lap. Snow was surprisingly good for how tracked out it looked lower in the chutes. Good vis, good snow, fun tree skiing.