A Chungus Amungus

Quick report

Weather

sunny, windy, warm

Riding Quality

ok

Snow Conditions

crusty, windAffected

The gong show rolled into the Dave White hut for a few days mid week. Strong to extreme N or NW wind beat us there and hung around for a bit to make sure we felt welcome. Couple of small naturals low down on NE crossloads ran towards the end of its hissy fit. The wind kept things cold on the solar aspects for us and after some assessment we got comfortable skiing most things that weren't obvious windslab (which was like trying to ski on sastrugi shaped sandstone anyways) or greasy looking thicks to thins. Breakable crust on true solar aspects kept us honest while some patches of boot top pow and a well stocked goodie bag kept things fun. Probably some nice snow in sheltered northerlies lurking around but it was just too nice in the sun to go looking. Actually did end up digging a profile. On a south aspect at 2100m with 320cm of snow we found a couple surface hoar layers down about 50 and 90. They're breaking down and being well behaved. Similar story with the Dec 2 layer. It was easy to find at that elevation and had 1mm facets on top of it. Well, not easy as it was 180cm deep. Obvious may be a better word. None of these layers showed any concerning signs of propagation in our tests. Nor were they reacting to any human activity that we saw. The snowpack is well consolidated and right side up throughout. By the end of the day today we were thinking about isolated pockets of windslab on N-E mid slope features that were reactive to size 1.5 and that Dec 2 MFcr that is widespread but unreactive to size 2.5. The heat stress test that the snowpack went through last week helped bolster our confidence with the current mild temps. Biggest hazard really is running out of beer and sunscreen. Nice to be high above the clag for a bit.