north shore avalanche hunting

Riding quality was:

Good

Snow conditions were:

• Powder

We rode:

• Mellow slopes

We stayed away from:

• Convex slopes
• Steep slopes

Avalanche conditions

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

We spent the day in the Cypress backcountry investigating how 40 to 80 cm of snow is bonding to the underlying crust/facet combination.

We were pretty conservative with our travel. We used ridges and ribs to largely stay out of avalanche terrain. We saw recent human triggered and/or natural avalanche activity including debris piles that looked less than 24 hours old. Most avalanche activity was in steep treed terrain.

As we traveled, we stomped on every small feature we could find. Some slopes did not produce any activity while others produced large settlements, shooting cracks and avalanches, but propagation was limited to about 10 meters.

We think that this weak layer is in the process of healing, but it’s doing so far slower than usual for the region.