Cleveland area

Riding quality was:

OK

Snow conditions were:

• Crusty
• Hard
• Wind affected

We rode:

• Alpine slopes

We stayed away from:

• Convex slopes
• Steep slopes

The day was:

• Sunny

Avalanche conditions

• Whumpfing or drum-like sounds or shooting cracks.

Skied in the Cleveland area from 950 to 1780 m. Most significant observation today is that the winds this week hammered the snowpack on the west side of the pass (I was not in the east side and have no obs). Lots of very wind affected snow. Skied up the NE glacier and it has a hard surface layer, and even sastrugi in places. No whumpfing or drum like sounds here and the upper snowpack feels dense. We poked into the NW side with the intention of skiing down to the Chilkoot and over to Feather but as we descended found a 5-10 Cm slab that was poorly bonded to the snow underneath it, this sounded drum-like when touching it with a pole. Seemed to be 20 cms+ of new snow below this slab. This was also making for terrible, breakable slab skiing and we decided to return back to the summit and ski the NE glacier and the hard but skiable snow! There was a group of Heli skiers in the area and they may have descended into the Chilkoot.

Winds were light from the North today.