Russet and Adit Ridges

Riding quality was:

Good

Snow conditions were:

• Crusty
• Hard
• Powder
• Wind affected

We rode:

• Alpine slopes
• Dense trees
• Mellow slopes
• Open trees
• Sunny slopes

We stayed away from:

• Convex slopes
• Steep slopes

The day was:

• Cloudy
• Cold
• Foggy
• Stormy
• Sunny
• Windy

Avalanche conditions

• Slab avalanches today or yesterday.
• 30cm + of new snow, or significant drifting, or rain in the last 48 hours.
• Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.

Extreme variability in surface snow conditions depending upon asp, elevation, and slope angle. In isolated pockets soft slabs to 50cm depth reacting with shooting cracks and/or releases to ski cuts. Right next door a 2-3cm MFcr was the surface.

In asp with some element of North, near surface facets over crust or windslab underlie the new snow, especially from 1600m up to 1900m. This currently makes for an unexoectedly good skiing surface.

Temps dropped during the day and regular, powerful convective flurries came through from the SW and W with winds gusting to 100kph. This redistributed the 7-10cms of new and previous near surface facets into windslabs just below ridgetops and behind ribs.

In areas prone to convective and orographic effects snowfall for the day may have totalled 15cm.

Experienced one whumpf and settlement on flat ground near 2000m during one of the intense powerflurries just after noon. As skies cleared 10min later it appeared a sudden convexity, ENE asp, had remotely triggered to size 1.0 just 30m east of my track.