Good Friday? More like Great Friday!

With the weather stations reporting a whopping 80 cm of new snow in the past 24 hours in the Strathcona park area, we had to head up and check it out at Beadnell. We headed up the Oyster main to the Mass main, and were able to park at the top of the cutblock. Lucky for us, this is exactly where sled-able snow began. It was a fairly easy trip up the trail to the cabin and across the meadow, with only moderate woops on the trail. Around the cabin and cutblock area, there was about 10 cm of wet new snow. From there we headed straight to the chute which was in fair condition, good snow with a central trench that was fairly deep. The trail to the upper cabin was in good shape, and when we arrived there, we found around 30 cm of dry snow. We headed up to the top to check the surroundings and spotted numerous dry loose, few 10-15 cm wind slab, and several loose wet avalanches with more occurring as we watched. All of these avalanches came out of steep terrain. The sledding conditions were incredible up top, with occasional firm reminders of the wind effect to bring you back to reality. By midday, a few other groups of sledders had arrived and began testing the slopes thoroughly with minimal results. I guess it's not time to pack the sled up yet. An awesome April storm, thank you to the Easter Bunny for this special treat.