Pin Wheelin’ n’ Dealin’

Riding quality was:

Good

Snow conditions were:

• Crusty
• Heavy
• Wet

We rode:

• Alpine slopes
• Convex slopes
• Mellow slopes
• Open trees
• Steep slopes
• Sunny slopes

The day was:

• Cloudy
• Sunny
• Warm
• Windy

Avalanche conditions

• Rapid temperature rise to near or above 0°C or wet surface snow.

Overnight temps below 0 froze the upper snowpack. The morning started off socked in but strong to extreme winds from the East eventually blew the cloud out. By late morning it was primarily sunny with temps up to +5 in the alpine. Strong to extreme winds from the East continued throughout the day.

By mid afternoon the upper snowpack had softened greatly. Pin wheeling was occurring in the alpine on all aspects and seen wheeling for several hundred meters in areas. Several sz1 wet slides were triggered by skiers on steep slopes.

Came across two other old sz2+ slides (likely Thursday) seen in photos. One crown was ~1m, ~80m wide and ran several hundred meters. Another had a crown of ~30cm, 60m wide and ran 100m.

2.5m snowpack @ 1000m

3.5m snowpack @ 1300m