Surprise Party

We had the whole field team out to play today in the Groundhog area in the Cariboos. We had to keep ourselves in check though due to the presence of a weak layer of surface hoar that we found buried 55cm. Our snowpack test results pointed toward this layer being hard to trigger, but we still didn't trust it. We saw debris from a small avalanche that came down a few days ago but nothing new. To gain confidence in the snowpack we will be starting out with smaller, more forgiving slopes where we can test this layer without big consequences before we commit ourselves to larger avalanche terrain. Riding quality was amazing in sheltered spots in the trees and lower meadows - many of the high elevation open areas were windswept and had very little snow.