Log Cabin Powder Party

Quick report

Weather

windy, sunny, cloudy, stormy

Ride Type

convexSlopes, mellowSlopes, openTrees, denseTrees

Stayed Away

steepSlopes, alpineSlopes

Riding Quality

amazing

Snow Conditions

windAffected, powder

Avalanche Conditions

avalancheConditionSnow, avalancheConditionSound

With visibility near zero in the higher pass, 4+ groups found ourselves playing in the lower trees of Log Cabin. From the parking lot up to 1100m (were the trees began to really thin) we found 30 to 40cm of low density snow on top of more firm and compacted storm snow (4F). Above this, up to our high point of 1280m we found +/-30cm of wind affected storm snow beginning to form soft rideable slab mixed in with pockets of sastrugi. Snow height in a small tree sheltered pocket @ 1280m was 152cm Snow height at 1100m was 174cm As you can see from the photos we found a fun little pocket feature that we managed to (purposefully) trigger a very small wind slab on. Trigger point was 42*, crown was 30-40cm deep, propagated +/-2 or 3m in either direction, planar across full release area, seemingly failed on previous compacted storm snow (4F density, only DcF found on bed surface. As well, in around 990m to 1100m we had some pretty serious whumpfing later in the day and were very happy to have been keeping things low angle. Weather was a mixed bag ranging from bluebird, full sun, and lower winds all the way to howling (40+ kmh) wind, low viz, and heavy snowfall (>1cm/hr). Though the overarching theme of the day was snow and wind. A beautiful day out - hope all the groups had as great of a time as we did.