You don’t know, ‘til you go

Riding quality was:

Terrible

Snow conditions were:

• Crusty
• Hard
• Wind affected

We rode:

• Alpine slopes
• Dense trees

We stayed away from:

• Convex slopes
• Steep slopes

The day was:

• Cold

Avalanche conditions

• Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.

They say you don’t know until you go, so we went to the Anzac to find out whats going on in an area we rarely visit. We left the truck all bundled up with temperatures down at -26. The shallow snowpack below tree line left us fighting through walls of alder and Christmas trees on our skin up. As we broke through into more open spaces we found the snow had be blasted by wind. Previous northerly winds had formed hard wind slabs on south and west slopes. Meanwhile, westerly winds from today were moving what soft snow was left into thin slabs in pockets and lee slopes that cracked under our skis. Despite poor ski conditions we decided to take advantage of moderate hazard and clear skies. We pushed into the alpine trying to avoid areas where the new slab was deeper or the snowpack changed quickly from thick to thin. After a quick pause on the summit, we had the challenge of survival skiing back down to the warmth of our truck!