West Chilkoot

Riding quality was:

OK

Snow conditions were:

• Hard
• Wind affected

We rode:

• Alpine slopes
• Mellow slopes

We stayed away from:

• Convex slopes
• Steep slopes

The day was:

• Sunny
• Warm

Avalanche conditions

• Slab avalanches today or yesterday.

Exploratory day on the west side of the Chilkoot. Surface conditions ranged from moist crust at some lower elevations to hard sastrugi, with some small reslient pockets of shallow wind-packed powder. 3 x sz 1.5 avalanches remote triggered from atop a flat bench, 50-100m away. All were on the same steep SE aspect and were heavily wind loaded. Slides stepped down at least twice and looked to be the March and mid-February crust/facet layers.

We observed another party's sled-triggered avalanche off the shoulder of Fraser (NNE aspect) at the east end of Bryant Lake as we were headed back to the parking lot. Size 1.5 but with very large, hard blocks of wind slab.

Overall conditions seemed to be fairly stable but some areas wind loaded during the last week were definitely reactive.