Confirmin’ it at McDermott

Quick report

Weather

sunny, cloudy

Ride Type

denseTrees, openTrees, convexSlopes

Stayed Away

alpineSlopes, steepSlopes

Riding Quality

good

Snow Conditions

powder, windAffected, crusty

Avalanche Conditions

avalancheConditionSlab

After being turned around due to a highway closure, we pivoted to McDermott basin. We staged at the cat shed and access was breezy up to the cabin where we switched to human powered travel. We climbed up to the notch, then over to hang ten. We dug a profile at 2000 m on a wind loaded NW aspect. The recent storm snow did not produce any results in tests, which was great to see. However, we were still able to produce consistent results on the January persistent slab layer, which was buried down 85 cm (ECTP28 on well preserved large SH). The day was mainly cloudy, wind was light from the west. It was snowing very lightly when we began our decent around 14:00. Skiing was decent where you couldn’t feel the crust below the storm. We noted several old natural storm slab avalanches, predominately on N-E aspects in steep rocky terrain, likely occurring during the storm or soon after.