Mystic Valley tree skiing

Quick report

wolfgangprotzner · Mar 5, 2017 · Shames

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Quick report

Weather
cold, stormy, cloudy, foggy
Ride Type
denseTrees, steepSlopes, openTrees
Stayed Away
alpineSlopes, convexSlopes
Riding Quality
Amazing
Snow Conditions
deepPowder
Avalanche Conditions
avalancheConditionSnow, avalancheConditionSlab

Skied steep cliffs and trees into Mystic Valley from looker's right of the bench below the Dome. Dug prior to skiing and found the facet interface above the 3-5cm thick crust, this was beneath approximately 60cm of non-cohesive storm snow. The interface was reactive to medium loading steps through two different isolated compression tests. This interface was also reactive in an extended column CT in the medium loading step range, but did not propagate through the column. All failures were planar. The skiing was ridiculous! Great powder, but due to the instability we steered clear of open, alpine, convex faces. We did manage to pull out a single small isolated storm slab with about a 50cm crown, maybe 10 meters wide, and on a 40-45 degree slope.