Zoa Treeline

La qualité du hors-piste était:

Excellente

Les conditions de neige étaient :

• Poudreuse
• Affectée par le vent

Nous avons parcouru:

• Forêt dense
• Pentes de faible inclinaison
• Forêt dégagée

Nous sommes restés à l'écart de:

• Pentes convexes
• Pentes raides

La journée était:

• De tempête
• Venteuse

Conditions d'avalanche

• Avalanches de plaque datant d'aujourd'hui ou d'hier.

Late post - for skiing Monday Feb 20th at Zoa at treeline and below.

Strong gusting winds, increasing in intensity throughout the day caused significant wind transport and formation of wind slabs on all NW-NE aspects that we observed (excluding very dense trees). Only a few cm of accumulation all day.

We expected touchy slabs and did not plan to ski any slopes >30deg. A ski cut on a short 30deg NE aspect around 1700m at a slight convexity confirmed this and produced the avalanche shown. It propagated further than anticipated and was a good reminder to keep test slopes much smaller and to avoid testing the limits of what is safe to ski too much. Afterwards, we stuck to only well supported slopes <25deg and avoided all overhead hazard.