Kicking it off

Quick report

Weather

cloudy

Ride Type

mellowSlopes

Stayed Away

alpineSlopes

Riding Quality

ok

Happy Winter Northerners! Got out for a stretch of the legs and look around Wednesday. Drove up to the summit, access off the highway is still rocky, not filled in sufficiently for good travel. Day was mostly cloudy, we headed back to Fraser. Skinned up to the lake, ice thin and creek crossing not practical. Other than a moose we seemed to be the first ones up the trail in the snow, and it's relevant to note that we had frequent whompfing on the trail. If you want to explore further up, head high before the pipe crossing on the trail (stay right of the creek). However it is unlikely you'd want to be up there, significantly less snow once on the bench of the lake and what was there was wind affected. Turned around and headed back down the trail, met some friendly sledders who were having fun in the open. Heads up, we also saw several sneaky rocks that had been struck by sleds. We ventured up the common creek access to the Chutes, several open spots and I punched through soaking both skis (and skins) at one point. Glad to have a scraper and skin wax on hand. Travel was very difficult to get into the chutes, the snow on the ribs is very thin, (15-20 cm) so it's a jungle. Once we got to the first open chute, the snow had been piled on the north-east side (lookers right) of the chute against the trees, probing 1-1.2 M. The lookers left was thin (20 cm) and hard in some places, there was even a chunk of hard wind slab in one place. Ascending we triggered several significant whomphs. We kept to low angle (low 20 degree) slopes (which took some creativity). Several whomphs resulted in cracks and one shook a tree 80m away vigorously. We recognised that these would have been slides on steeper terrain. A few hasty pits showed the storm snow that fell Sunday night was bonded in a slab, with a void and / or facets near ground. Settlement at this near ground level was our thesis for the collapses, with a possible hoar layer in sites near open water. Skied a few fun turns in the one chute and headed back. Access / egress from any terrain was very difficult, limiting our interest or ability to ski anything else. Upon our return to the road, very strong wind was present out of the north. Hold on to your skis when you take them off strong. Take care if you're heading out as the wind will have complicated things since our obs. Cheers to a great season to come and many safe and fun days for all!