Cerise Creek early season

Riding quality was:

Good

Snow conditions were:

• Powder
• Wind affected

We rode:

• Alpine slopes
• Convex slopes
• Dense trees
• Mellow slopes
• Open trees
• Sunny slopes

We stayed away from:

• Steep slopes

The day was:

• Cloudy
• Cold
• Stormy
• Sunny
• Windy

Avalanche conditions

• Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.

Spent 2 days at Cerise Ck. Thin coverage made access twice as long as usual, lots of alder. Snow depth increases rapidly from 1600 m and above but was still thin in places. Only skied E faces off of Motel 66 ridge from 1950 - 1650 m elevation. That aspect was wind loaded. Saturday night saw lots of NE wind transport and some ~10 cm of fresh. Of concern:

- Whumpfing was common in sheltered or thin (e.g. rocky ridges) areas

- 2 layers one at ~15 cm and one at around ~30 cm could be the reason for the above, hand pits showed cohesive wind slabs reacting on those two layers

Because of that, we stayed away from steeps and thin areas. Skiing was fantastic on open areas that had sheltered from the wind. Exiting on treed slopes N of the cabin and on to the landslide was possible but lots of early hazards. The glacier appeared bare lookers left and high near the col.