Super snow sliding

Quick report

Weather

windy, sunny

Ride Type

sunnySlopes

Stayed Away

alpineSlopes

Riding Quality

ok

Snow Conditions

powder, windAffected, hard

We found some super snow sliding on steep small slopes Sunday. Conditions were fast. We played around treeline and found fun riding. Before the kids hucked themselves downslope, we did a profile together on a 35 deg East facing slope at 925m and found 10cm 4F wind packed powder on older buried windslab that was pencil hard. The Jan melt freeze layer was a obvious crumbly faceted crust 10 cm thick down 90cm. Total snow depth was 210 cm here. We had a CTH 25 down 18 cm on an old storm interface and a ECTN down 37 cm. On prying with a shovel, the whole block above the Jan crust failed as a big dense block and it held together as a cohesive hunk even as it slid down the slope below the pit we dug. As one final stability test, the kids made a Tiktok of themselves jumping off a wind loaded 3 m high drop on a North aspect and nothing moved. (do not attempt this at home!) The relentless N wind started to ease to 20 km/ hr Sunday, it was sunny with a few clouds and -10 C by late afternoon.