Iago Corn
Quick reportolsonizak · Dec 17, 2023 · Retallack
Quick report
- Weather
- warm, sunny, cloudy
- Ride Type
- alpineSlopes, openTrees, mellowSlopes, denseTrees
- Stayed Away
- steepSlopes, sunnySlopes, convexSlopes, cutBlocks
- Riding Quality
- ok
- Snow Conditions
- crusty, heavy, wet
- Avalanche Conditions
- avalancheConditionTemp
Headed up to Iago around 8:30 to try and find some corn and were greeted by spring conditions. The access road is pretty thin along the highway with lots of melted/melting sections (although it was still passable/skiable). Creeks are still open and flowing but easy enough to cross. We started skinning on a fairly supportive crust which gradually thawed throughout the morning, especially on solar aspects as expected. As we gained elevation snow depth did increase, but never seemed to exceed a meter even on polar aspects. Rain runnles were observed all the way up to the summit. We dug a quick pit (mostly to refresh skills) didn’t observe any red flags and proceeded to ski the Iago north bowl as planned. The top 10-15cm was corn on top of a supportive crust and skied relatively well. The ski out below treeline was sporty but doable and the road skied surprisingly well. All in all a pretty ok early season day with some good weather and nice views
Weather
- Wind Speed
- windSpeedCalm
- Blowing Snow
- none
- Sky Condition
- fewClouds
- Precipitation Type
- none
- Precipitation24 Hours
- 0
The day started chilly and clear with some low elevation clouds that burned off as the sun rose. The morning was sunny and warm with the temp steadily rising, but some high broken clouds started to roll in around noon. The low sun angle and clouds seemed to cause the temperature to plateauing relatively early in the day. Winds were calm to negligible for the whole day
Snowpack
- Obs Type
- point
- Site Aspect
- N
- Test Fracture
- unevenBreak
- Site Elevation
- 1500
- Ski Penetration
- 5
- Test Failure Depth
- 15
- Site Elevation Band
- tln
- Surface Conditions
- corn, variable
We dug a quick pit to check out the layers mentioned in the forecast and refresh some skills. Snow depth was about 80cm in a relatively wind loaded 30ish degree NNW aspect test slope. As expected the bottom 70cm was well consolidated with a two thick crusts about 35 and 65cm down. The top 10-15cm was relatively unconsolidated corn which sat on top of another thinner crust. Our CT was pretty sloppy so the results didn’t really influence our decision making, but we did get a planar fracture 15cm down below the crust under a moderate/hard load which we felt was worth watching given the shallow snowpack. As we approached the summit of Iago we were also able to see the S-E aspects of the bowl to our south and saw the debris of a few size 1 wet loose that appeared to be a day or two old, mostly near cliff bands