Muscled our way up Russell

With grand excitement about the current low snow lines, we headed for a day up Mount Russell. The snow line is down on the Tlatlos Main, but there is some evidence of previous plowing. We jumped on our sleds at the turn-off for Mount Russell, and headed into the web of alder. This made for slow moving until we were above 1000 m, but we can proudly say there is now a sled width path up the road. In an exposed area at 1300 m, we found evidence of moderate previous wind transport and wind slab formation. In our snow pit, we found moderate resistant results at the base of the storm snow. With this in mind, we elected to stay in the soft powder in the sheltered areas and give the wind slabs one more day to bond to the surface below. Around 30 cm of new snow sits on the 2025/01/04 melt freeze crust, making for playful sledding conditions. Watch out! In the trees there is not enough depth of snow to bury the hazards, and there is not quite enough snow on the swamps or over the creeks yet. By the end of the day, we started to see pinwheeling starting on steep sunny slopes.