Slightly Better Than Dust On Crust

Riding quality was:

OK

Snow conditions were:

• Crusty

We rode:

• Alpine slopes
• Mellow slopes
• Open trees

We stayed away from:

• Alpine slopes
• Convex slopes
• Steep slopes

The day was:

• Cloudy

We used terrain features wisely to get up into the alpine to have a look around. Above 2200m on shaded aspects we found a thin breakable crust with 15cm of dry snow below. This was sitting on another thin breakable crust down 20cm. In more sun exposed terrain the crusts were more supportive. No real evidence of a big rain event above 2100m in this area.

We observed an older avalanche cycle from within last weeks storm. Cornices look large and droopy and could be a trigger for the deep persistent slab avalanches that we have seen so many of in the last week. We observed a fresher avalanche possibly from the sunny day on Sunday. It was a size 3 and looked cornice triggered.