Taiya south side

Riding quality was:

Good

Snow conditions were:

• Hard
• Powder
• Wind affected

We rode:

• Alpine slopes
• Steep slopes
• Sunny slopes

We stayed away from:

• Convex slopes

The day was:

• Cold
• Sunny

Found some nice snow on the south side of Taiya. -24 at highway in the morning with moderate north winds transporting small amount of snow (in part since most of the snow is already heavily wind affected near the road). Snow quality is much better once we got deeper into the valley and sheltered. There was 5 to 10 cm of light snow generally undisturbed by wind on the surface hiding a variety of surface underneath, ranging from soft snow to soft and hard wind slab and even bullet proof surface in steep terrain near ridge top. At times we observed a reactive soft wind slab of 10 to 15 cm thickness although it was spotty and generally not continuous. The deeper snowpack generally felt strong with no other signs of instability noted during the day.

More north facing terrain also looked like to hold good snow although we didn't investigate this aspect. A few small loose dry avalanche were observed from steep and rocky terrain. An avalanche of size 1 to 1.5 was observed on a north east aspect, likely occurred 3-4 days ago during the storm cycle. Debris were covered with 10 to 15 cm of new snow.