White Pass East

Since you found this MIN post - we know you are making use of the Mountain Information Network! Check out our video thank posted on social media: on instagram we are @avcanyukon and find us on facebook at Avalanche Canada Yukon. Big shout our to all the mountain people who have been contributing MIN posts thru the season: your observations are so valuable to ground truthing and supporting the Avalanche Canada forecast program in Haines Pass and White Pass. We can't thank you enough! Keep it up. ...and the weather today...meh. It clouded over in the afternoon, the ceiling dropped, the south wind picked up enough to drift on the highway and a bit of snow is starting to come in. A bit of fresh snow has softened the crust at lower elevations.

A fresh coating of new snow sits over a variety of surfaces throughout the Big Y today. While there was only 5cm of fresh in the valley bottom, there was up to 30cm of soft snow on the glacier making for smooth sledding. Light winds have had minimal effect on the new snow so far but we did find one large, convex slope that had a windslab developing. After having a look and a helmets off discussion, we decided to ride a similar slope right beside it that was more supported and had no terrain traps in the runout. We saw a few loose dry slides out of steep rocky terrain but no new slab avalanches.

Barely froze overnight, seems like a greenhouse effect today. -1 C at 0900 at base camp at 900 m, where snow is 200 cm deep snow, cakey on top. Settling rapidly. 40cm 4F on P+ old snow. Weather was warm, overcast, flat light, very light South. Sledded across on the East side, not as much snow as the West: 150 cm total snow at 1100 m around TL in Big Y where is was warm + 3 C by 1300hr. Probed 40 cm from March 15-17 storm upsized down, 1F to 4F on old firm hardpack. New snow is warm and sticky. No new avalanches observed in the Big Y. Sledding was good, snow was heavy, but totally carve able. the skis and boards stayed strapped on the rack today! Driving home it was warm +4 C around Log Cabin and + 5 C at Tushi by mid afternoon.

Wind has made it down into the bottoms of gulleys and valleys and it has redistributed all available snow to small pockets of rideable snow. Where the snow is soft there has been a lot of recreational traffic. Looking forward to some snow in the forecast!

Today we battled through the valley bottom ground blizzard and were rewarded with a bit of sunshine higher up (above 1300m). As soon as we entered the big Y and werein a valley perpendicular to the direction of the wind, it was quite calm and the snow was sheltered from wind affect. We avoided slopes with signs of wind loading (pillows, convexities, cornices) and gave large slopes a wide berth. We probed 170 cm on a northeast slope at 1750m. We probed around throughout the day and found pretty consistently less than 200cm of snow. Below 1500m we could consistently find the crust that formed late January down about 50 cm. The whole day we could hear the wind howling and see it moving snow at ridge top.

25-30cm of fresh snow fell in White Pass on Sunday night vastly improving riding conditions. The new snow did come with some wind so riding was excellent in sheltered areas and wind pressed but passable in more exposed areas. For the most part, we couldn't even feel the old crust under the new powder snow. We did observe evidence of a Na wind slab avalanche cycle that produced a series of small avalanche on NE facing slopes during the storm. We dug on a northeast facing wind loaded alpine slope in the alpine in search of the early January surface hoar layer. We did find it buried about 100cm but the surface hoar crystals were very decomposed and the layer did not produce any results on snowpack tests. All in all, the riding was quite good and it was nice to see things shaping up again in White Pass after a pretty crusty week.

Found dry snow above 1400m around 11am. By 3 pm, snow up to 1800m was good for snowballs, bad for tomorrow's crust. Skiing was excellent and got better throughout the day. Decent sized wet loose avalanches were running 4 pm and later, over areas visited earlier by sleds... I.e. watch out later in the day as per the bulletins. The heli skiers were found some RedBull-style couoirs today by the looks of it!

We checked out a different zone in White Pass East today. It was just as wind affected as everywhere else! Convoluted sled access then skinned up to the end of the valley. Skiing was rugged, the views were awesome. The day started out cold with -22 out in White Pass and it warmed up to -2 by mid afternoon.

We took advantage of some unexpectedly good visibility and traveled in valleys on both the east and west sides of White Pass. In most places, there is a crust on all aspects up to 1200m due to warm temperatures and sun this week. Wind the strong to moderate southwest winds that started Wednesday morning, we expected to see signs of a natural wind slab cycle and though we saw a lot of alpine terrain, we saw no new avalanches. That being said, intense wind transport into high alpine north facing features was actively occurring, and our plan was to avoid these areas. Riding was still pretty good in sheltered alpine terrain but the extensive crusts below 1200m made it challenging to get to the goods.