Caribou Basin

Riding quality was:

Good

Snow conditions were:

• Powder

We rode:

• Alpine slopes
• Convex slopes
• Mellow slopes
• Open trees

The day was:

• Cloudy

Little rip up to Caribou Basin. 15-20 cm of recent snow had no slab property and little wind effect in the alpine basin. We observed some minor loose dry activity (photo) to size1 out of steep terrain.

We were on the hunt for surface hoar under the recent snow but didn't find any. Instead, there was a super thin zipper crust all over, up to at least 2000m (which is as high as we went).

The December surface hoar and crust layers were down 65 cm and 70 cm respectively. A compression test produced no results on these layers. The surface hoar crystals were rounding and the crust appeared to be bonding well to surrounding snow, with rounded grains above and below. Yay!