Harvey Pass Windslab Issue

Riding quality was:

Terrible

Snow conditions were:

• Hard
• Powder
• Wind affected

We rode:

• Alpine slopes
• Mellow slopes
• Steep slopes

We stayed away from:

• Alpine slopes
• Convex slopes
• Steep slopes

The day was:

• Cloudy
• Cold
• Sunny

Avalanche conditions

• 30cm + of new snow, or significant drifting, or rain in the last 48 hours.

We had dug a pit to start our day just adjacent to the slope(s) we had planned on skiing. We found the new snow from the last storm cycle had consolidated quite well and was producing a pretty stiff slab. It appeared to be failing on the Jan17 surface hoar layer and produced smooth planar failure about 35cms down on 5 light taps from the wrist. This occurred on 2 extended column tests on a nw lee slope.

We expected the snow to be slabby and limited our group to a small but steep rocky piece of terrain. A light snowboarder triggered a roughly 50m wide size 1 slab on our second lap on the slope. They easily skied out of the small slab and our group decided to move from the already small slope to even smaller and low angle terrain and no board it to death.

Good times were had and it was a great day of managing dangerous conditions as a group, and getting some mellow sled laps in to start the year!