The avalanche crustmmandments

Today we enjoyed a bluebird day in the Telkwa range. We saw a few size 2 avalanches that appeared to have been triggered by cornice fall, on steep, alpine faces near rocks. We avoided travelling under these kinds of features today. We were able to find areas with good riding at treeline where there is a dusting of new snow over the March 22nd rain crust. This crust extends well into the alpine, to mountaintop in the Telkwa range. Elsewhere, riding is crusty and variable. We dug on a N aspect at 1600m and found 200cm total snow depth. We found another crust (from the February rain event) 45cm deep in the snowpack. There were developed facets on this crust which produced moderate Compression Test (CT) results but no propagating Extended Column Test (ECT) results.