Ashman Ridge

Riding quality was:

Good

Snow conditions were:

• Powder
• Wind affected

We rode:

• Alpine slopes
• Open trees

We stayed away from:

• Convex slopes
• Steep slopes

The day was:

• Cloudy
• Cold
• Windy

Avalanche conditions

• Slab avalanches today or yesterday.
• Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.

A few obs from an avalanche course today. We toured up the reg summer route, and down into the north bowl area. We had a mainly cloudy day, with a few sunny breaks, no precip,-13c and moderate, gusting strong easterlies at ridges and exposed areas.

We saw 2 small size 1 windslabs in immediate lee terrain on west aspects at TL, crowns were already blown in. Otherwise no new, but we also didnt see a lot of the aspects that are getting loaded. The snowpack depth at treeline is 3m , with 5cm of snow from yesterday getting blown into new windslabs. In sheltered areas at treeline,there is 50cm over the raincrust from early Feb. We had several moderate shears in compression tests down 25cm on stellars, and very hard, resistant shears on small facets on top of the crust. We had no results with an extended column test.

The new wind slabs were reactive with cracking and small failures on test slopes near ridges on W-NW aspects. We had no whumpfing . Good skiing.