Soggy at Hankin

Riding quality was:

Terrible

Snow conditions were:

• Heavy
• Wet

We rode:

• Mellow slopes
• Open trees

We stayed away from:

• Alpine slopes
• Steep slopes

The day was:

• Cloudy
• Foggy
• Warm
• Wet

Avalanche conditions

• 30cm + of new snow, or significant drifting, or rain in the last 48 hours.

Went for a day at hankin to hopefully ski trees and avoid the alpine hazard. The road into hankin is a complete sheet of ice, good studded tires and 4wd or chains highly recommended.

It rained up to ~1300m before slowly transitioning to light snow, there was ~10cm of new snow overnight above these elevations but it is heavy and wet. Temperature was rising as it got towards lunch time at the warming up.

Dug a profile on a NW aspect at 1500m. Found a windslab sitting on top of facets buried 20cm. CTE5 with a sudden planar failure. The recent 10cm sitting on top of this layer is also cohesive and fractured during cutting.

We also identified the weak layer mentioned in the bulletin buried 60cm but it was unreactive to our tests, seems like a probable layer to have a step-down to however.

Skiing was quite mediocre in the runs below the cabin, wet and heavy snow all the way down before transitioning back to the rain.