Marriott Basin SH

Riding quality was:

OK

Snow conditions were:

• Crusty
• Hard
• Powder

We rode:

• Dense trees
• Mellow slopes
• Open trees

We stayed away from:

• Alpine slopes
• Convex slopes
• Steep slopes

The day was:

• Cloudy
• Foggy
• Stormy
• Warm

Avalanche conditions

• Slab avalanches today or yesterday.
• Rapid temperature rise to near or above 0°C or wet surface snow.

Went up to Wendy Thompson hut today, and we wanted to check what the last rain cycle did to the snowpack. Looks like, overall, FL was somewhere between 1800-1900m. Buried, under 12cm of new low density snow, there is a rain crust, only 2-3cm thick at that point. Below that, snow condition goes degradating and the whole thing becomes rain crust at the highway elevation. Tree skiing below 1700m is suicidal. Rapid warming to 0ºC around 2pm.

Even though today was cloudy and flat light we observed the next avalanche:

Nc, Size 2, NE aspect, 2.050m, which it happened probably in the last 24h and it looked like it only released the storm slab. Right at "Honey Bronzed...". All this is an estimated because the light was bad.

Compression test at 2:15pm gave us the next results:

(NE aspect, 26% steep, 1.940m, 0º Celsius, Overcast skies with calm winds and freezing rain. 200cm of snowpack)

CTH26-> SP down 100cm on 1 finger SH (10mm) layer that was 15cm thick.

CTH29-> Same as above.

Seems that the rain didn't clean much in the alpine. Quite down right now but careful on shallow areas! Be safe.