Sunny Sinclair

Riding quality was:

Good

Snow conditions were:

• Heavy
• Wet

We rode:

• Alpine slopes
• Convex slopes
• Sunny slopes

The day was:

• Sunny
• Warm

Avalanche conditions

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

Spring has arrived in the alpine.

+6 degrees at 1600m calm winds and the sun was packing a punch. We did the plateau tour today with great visibility to gain as many observations as possible.

With the recent warming and solar input we were un surprised to see numerous cornice releases as well as numerous old wind slabs from earlier this week.

In testing we had moderate results down 40 on an old wind slab interface but nothing else of note.

At the end of the day in the final hour we found exactly what we were looking for, a size 3 natural avalanche running on the Jan 26th layer. Every time we get close to pulling this problem it rears its ugly head again.

Give the snowpack some time to adjust to the warming and solar input and we should be in the swing of spring in no time.